The next point that I wish to refer to is the one elaborated at length by an Hon’ble Friend of mine for whose administrative experience and oratorical gifts I have very great regard. That friend started by examining the list of taxes in the Provincial sphere and tried to belittle and pooh-pooh the items you find there. I think the cage he tried to make out was that the distribution of the taxable sources between the Centre and the Provinces in the Union Powers Committee’s Report was deliberately calculated to reduce the resources of the provinces and to increase the resources of the Centre. That view, I think, Sir, is far from the real state of the facts. As a matter of fact we have included in the Provincial List all the items of taxation and revenues which you find in the Provincial List of the Government of India Act today. In, this connection I must say that it was rather extraordinary that while my Hon’ble Friend spent so much time and rhetoric on belittling these various individual items in the Provincial List, he did not devote a reasonable proportion of that time and rhetoric to the items which wit have included in the Federal List. There also we have only repeated what is to be found in the Government of India Act. He seems also not to have attached sufficient, importance to a matter to which the Committee has drawn very prominent attention in the last paragraph of its Report. The Committee recognises that the sources which are listed for the benefit of the Centre might produce revenues which would be perhaps on present standards more than adequate for the needs of the Centre. In any case it recognises the fact that, if the Centre retains the entire proceeds of all the Central taxes that are mentioned, it might result in upsetting the financial equilibrium of the Units and therefore has made the specific recommendation that steps should be taken for the assignment wholly of these sources to the units and for the sharing of other sources between the Centre and the Units periodically at the discretion of any authority which in the course of the framing of the Constitution we may decide upon establishing for that purpose.
