Mr. Vice-President, Sir, as an able and competent lawyer, the Honourable Dr. Ambedkar has presented the Draft Constitution in this House in very lucid terms and he has impressed the outside world and also some of the Honourable Members here, but that is not the Criterion for judging the constitution. This is a constitution prepared for democracy in this country and Dr. Ambedkar has negatived the very idea of democracy by ignoring the local authorities and villages. Sir, local authorities are the pivots of the social and economic life of the country and if there is no place for local authorities in this Constitution, let me tell you that the Constitution is worth not worth considering. Local authorities today are in very peculiarly miserable condition. The provinces which complain that the Centre has been made too strong and that certain powers have been taken away from them, have themselves in the intoxication of power taken away the powers of the local bodies, and in the name of mal-administration today more than 50 per cent of the local bodies have been superseded by Provincial Governments. Sir, this was the attitude in the previous British regime, and our provincial Governments are merely following that practice instead of revolutioning the entire system of local bodies. Unless a direction is given in the Constitution to Provincial Governments to make these bodies very useful organisations for the uplift of villagers, let me tell you, that this document is not worth presentation in the name of democracy. The finances of the local bodies are, in a miserable condition. The Provincial Governments would not like to give them the electricity taxes, the entertainment taxes, etc. which are the only sources of revenue for these local bodies in Western countries. Here in this country all these taxes are grabbed by the provinces. This has left the localbodies mere skeleton today. If this is the tendency, how can you expect the local bodies and villages to prosper? His Excellency the Governor General in his recent speeches and also our Deputy Prime Minister in his speech in Bombay stated that every villager must be made to understand that he is responsible man or a responsible woman and made to realise that he or she has got a share in the administration of the country. I fail to understand how this can be done if you ignore the villagers, the largest portion of the population?
