If we could utilise the resources that we have, then we could have brought Assam to the fore-front of India’s provinces. What are the resources? Take Petroleum and kerosene. Assam is the only province which produces that very valuable commodity in the dominion of India. We get only a paltry sum of Rs. 5 lakhs of royalty of the crores of rupees worth of crude oil that is pumped out the bowels of mother earth, whereas the Central Government by way of excise duty on the manufactured articles is enjoying for the past twenty years or more a sum of very nearly Rs. 2 crores of rupees annualy. We tried our level best to get a share of it. But all our petitions, all our threats, went in vain The Central Government was adamant and we did not get a single pice out of that excise duty, although if I remember aright-I dealt with the subject in 1929 and it is full twenty years ago-there is a Privy Council case from the Dominion of Australia where this very question arose and the Privy Council decided that the proceeds of such excise duty ought to go to the State, and for very good reasons. The more you produce petrol from the crude oil the more you are depleting the natural resources and the natural wealth of the province. This excise duty is in the nature of tax on capital.
