I will again join in the discussion when the jute duty in article 254 comes up for discussion and when article 260 is taken up where the Finance Commission will have to be appointed five years after the Constitution. It is a very heartless and insincere draft. Is it the spirit of democracy working in the Finance Ministry of the Government of India that it will obstruct at every stage in order to maintain its hold on the finances and to spend it in the best way it likes? I am giving out no secret when I say that in 1946 the Government of India decided that the Army expenditure should be reduced to one hundred crores. We know today it is one hundred and fifty-eight crores and that too after the partition. I cannot see why the Government of India should grab the wealth of the provinces and dispense it in the way they like. This sovereign House framing this sovereign Constitution is not going to allow the Finance Ministry of the Government of India to play ducks and drakes with the resources of India according to its fancy and whimsicality and thus let the provinces starve. Sir, on behalf of the provinces, particularly the undeveloped provinces of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Assam, I plead before this August House for justice for the undeveloped I provinces; I plead that the pose of the Finance Ministry that no steps should be taken With speed and haste should be condemned and this House must accept the recommendations of the Expert Committee which had on it such expert financiers, namely, Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, Mr. V. S. Sundaram, Mr. M. V. Rangachari (who was member Secretary). This officer is still a Deputy Secretary in the Finance Department of the Government of India. Why has the Finance Department overruled the decisions of this Committee? I plead before the House that justice should be rendered to the teeming millions of India and to the helpless provinces by giving them what is their due.
