Sir, I went through the memorandum that the Government of India submitted to the Sarker Committee. It is a heartless, colourless memoranda. It deals with its own difficulties; it never assume that the Finance Ministry of the Central Government has sovereign responsibilities to India and to the provinces at large. Nowhere in that long memorandum is there any mention that the provinces must develop, or the provinces must get more resources, more share of the income-tax so that they can develop. I had never seen a more cruel document drafted by the foreign rulers that ruled us up to August 1947. I have seen the memorandum in 1936-37. I have seen the notes of the financial satraps and bureaucratic rulers in 1924 and 1925 and I never read such a heartless document and Sir, that was, the considered views of our Finance Department, the Department of the independent Government of India-which now plays ducks and drakes with the resources of the provinces and overawes the provincial financial ministers. It is a shameless Government. It is a shameless Government I again say, and poor provinces, poor Premiers of the provinces have to plead their own case, they have to plead their poverty, their backward conditions Of course, Bombay need not plead. Why should Bombay plead with a per capita revenue of Rs. 25? Why should Madras plead with a per capita income of Rs. 19? Why should U. P. plead with income of Rs. 21? But Orissa, poor as we are with a per capita revenue of Rs. 4 or 5, should ask for something nearer a basic level. Assam spends much less after the partition of Assam; and is it not the sovereign duty of this House to ensure adequate and minimum basic expenditure for the development of these provinces ? That can only be ensured if 60 per cent of all sources of income-tax goes to the provinces, based by allocation on population basis and on no other basis.
