846 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
would he still continue to penalise the consumer and not give him any subsidy or offer him any kind of relief from the distress from which he is suffering ? That is the point. There is no dispute that some kind of subsidy is necessary in this country in the situation in which we find ourselves. The whole question is, at what point the blood may be supplied, at what point the subsidy may be given, to the producer or the consumer. I make this observation in the hope that the Hon. the Finance Minister will reconsider the line that he has been pursuing, namely, that our immediate problem could be solved more by giving subsidy to the producer and not to the consumer. He may succeed. As we know, originally, our Government, when I was a member of it, had announced that we must achieve self-sufficiency by the year 1952. Our Prime Minister, day in and day out, emphasised that after 1952 we shall not import a single grain of food from outside. Today, I think I am right in saying that the Government of India have realisd that reaching self-sufficiency in 1952 was an idle dream. They have now proclaimed that we will achieve it by 1956. God only knows. The target is always receding; it goes back and back. We do not know for how many years the consumers in this country will have to undergo this agony and allow the Finance Minister and the Minister of Food to delay the thing, by trying as if in a laboratory, the various ideas, the various proposals and the various schemes they have in their mind. I do not wish to dilate upon this subject any more.
Sir, I would now say a few words with regard to the General Budget as a whole. The Budget undoubtedly in every country is an expression of the function which a Government undertakes towards its people. There was once a time in this country when the function of the British Government was to collect taxes and to maintain law and order. The welfare of the public, the well-being of the people, their educational advancement, public health, unemployment, or any of those remedies and reliefs, which were now found functioning on such a large scale in the Budgets of the various European countries, had no place. Not only they had no place in the Government but the Government itself had not accepted any liability on that