I expected that the terms of the Sarker Committee would be wide enough to include more things than have been undertaken for investigation. I plead with you and with the honourable Members of this House that the time has come when attempts should be made to find out means for evolution of a proper system of finance both for the Provinces and the Centre. Our finances have been allowed to develop without taking care to develop them properly and in a scientific manner. In the result, they have grown in their own way without any consideration of the scientific evolution of such an important question as this. The Sarker Committee Report has nothing in it to face the problem squarely and well. All that it has done is to recommend to this House in what manner certain items of revenue have to be distributed both between the Centre and the provinces as also among the provinces themselves. The limited scope of recommendations therefore makes me confine myself to the recommendations themselves. Considering this article I cannot go beyond the terms of this article, namely, the allocation of the proceeds of the Income-tax. The Sarker Committee proposes that 60 per cent. of the proceeds should go to the provinces while 40 per cent. should go to the Centre. I had expected that sufficient explanation should have been given why the Centre should have 40 per cent. In this connection let me refer to the report of Professor Adarkar and Mr. Nehru wherein they have shown that in Australia the Commonwealth retains to itself only 25 per cent. of the Income-tax. Why should you have 15 per cent. more than what Australia keeps for herself is a matter on which the Committee ought to have given us an explanation. True it is that the Centre requires more money under the present circumstances. But the present difficult circumstances are not to be perpetuated. I have little complaint with any one who pleads for some more expenditure for the Centre in the first three or five or ten years of its existence, but to have a permanent allocation of 40 per cent. out of Income-tax seems to me not very justifiable.
