842 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
demanding that. Secondly, Sir, with regard to the question of the rural demand which has been put forth by the Hon. the Finance Minister as a ground for refusing subsidy, I am sorry to say that he has now agreed to accept that contention when the same has been urged upon him for the last several years and which he has repudiated all along. I am sure that it has been the demand of the provincial Ministers that if you are giving subsidy, you must not make a discrimination between the industrial population and the rural population. You must give subsidy to all or you must give subsidy to none. That has been an old old argument. But I do not remember a single Finance Minister or a single Food Minister—and we have had a series of them one after the other—having ever agreed to that proposition. It has always been the policy or the contention of the Government of India that in the matter of allocating subsidy, certain classification must be made. A classification must be made ……..
The Minister for Finance (Shri C. D. Deshmukh): On a point of information, Sir. The system of subsidy whereby only industrial towns were subsidized was adopted only last year.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Sir, the demand that the subsidy should be extended to the rural area is not a new thing at all. No Government of India, so far as I remember, has ever agreed to that demand.
Shri C. D. Deshmukh: What I meant was that before last year the subsidy was given to rural as well as urban areas; so, no such contention could have been made.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: If that is so, then it is all the worse for the Finance Minister, I should say if in the past you have accepted the demand that subsidy should be given to all, then I do not quite understand why you should resile from that position now.
Shri H. N. Kunzru (Uttar Pradesh) : Whatever may be the demand, he has said in this connection that subsidy was given not merely to industrial centres, but to all urban and rural areas. Is that a fact ? Was subsidy given to those rural