What is the use of this Commission and what is the use of this Constitution when the Finance Department of the Government of India maintains its autocratic independence and spends most of the revenues of India on the so-called defence of India, spends it on the inflated staff of the Government of India. The staff of the Government of India can be retrenched by half or more than half and considerable savings can be made. What is the condition of the finances of the Government of India? It is already running at a loss. Its revenues do not cover its normal expenditure, and yet the Finance Department goes on merrily spending as it likes, without caring for the primary responsibility imposed on it by the Constitution that it should render social and economic justice to the people Sir, this is a charge against the Government of India, and the Government of India must justify their position by explaining on the floor of this House why it has rendered no social an economic justice to the people of India during the last two years of out independent existence. It is no use saying that the Constitution will be promulgated on The 26th January 1950 and thereafter the Finance Department will formulate proposals with this end in view and put them before this House. That is not the real attitude of the Finance Department. The Finance Department has become too powerful. From six or seven departments, the Government has come to consist of nineteen Ministries, each Ministry as an autonomous body, each Ministry functioning and spending as it likes. Who are these finance officers? They are the traditional careerists who worked under Sir Basil Blackett in 1925, who worked under Sir James Grigg in 1936 and 1937. Such are the men who are guiding the financial affairs of the Government of India and they are, arch-bureaucrats and arch autocrats, and if any of them has any democratic spirit, I will bow to him. I know none of them have that; otherwise they would have shown it by their action in the last two years and I will say this, Sir. they have defied the Constitution. They have not understood the spirit of the independent Constitution that we are framing in this House and they will carry on in their autocratic way until we collapse.
