Mr. President, Sir, every time the question of the Centre comes up, people say that they should make the Centre strong, because the provinces misbehave and that we must always keep a vigilant eye on them. Not that I am in favour of the view of making the Centre weak, but people who have fought for democracy, people who are framing a democratic constitution, forget that if the provincial governments misbehave there are provincial legislatures to set them right. It is a sad commentary upon the psychology of most of us that we completely ignore the provincial legislatures and the people in the provinces, and attribute all virtues to the Centre and to the Government that exists in Delhi. If we scrutinise for a moment the way in which the Governments are run in the provinces and the Centre, I for one do not find that the Government at the Centre is being run on very much more efficient or honest lines than the Governments are being run in the provinces. It is far better that we take note of the facts as they are. Can we say that the Secretariat here in Delhi is being run more honestly or more efficiently than the Secretariats are being run in the provinces? It is a sad commentary, as I said before, on us that forgetting these facts we decry the regimes in the provinces and the provincial legislatures every time and praise the Government here to the skies. That is a psychology which will ultimately work to uproot democracy in this country. As a friend of mine suggested a little while ago, we are investing the Central Government with powers which it will not be able effectively to exercise or honestly make use of.
