Vol. 15 · pages 861–865

842 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES demanding that. Secondly, Sir, with regard to the question of the rural demand which has been put forth by the Hon. the Finance Minister as a ground for refusing subsidy, I am sorry to say that he has now agreed to accept that contention when the same has been urged upon him for the last several years and which he has repudiated all along. I am sure that it has been the demand of the provincial Ministers that if you are giving subsidy, you must not make a discrimination between the industrial population and the rural population. You must give subsidy to all or you must give subsidy to none. That has been an old old argument. But I do not remember a single Finance Minister or a single Food Minister—and we have had a series of them one after the other—having ever agreed to that proposition. It has always been the policy or the contention of the Government of India that in the matter of allocating subsidy, certain classification must be made. A classification must be made …….. The Minister for Finance (Shri C. D. Deshmukh): On a point of information, Sir. The system of subsidy whereby only industrial towns were subsidized was adopted only last year. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: Sir, the demand that the subsidy should be extended to the rural area is not a new thing at all. No Government of India, so far as I remember, has ever agreed to that demand. Shri C. D. Deshmukh: What I meant was that before last year the subsidy was given to rural as well as urban areas; so, no such contention could have been made. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: If that is so, then it is all the worse for the Finance Minister, I should say if in the past you have accepted the demand that subsidy should be given to all, then I do not quite understand why you should resile from that position now. Shri H. N. Kunzru (Uttar Pradesh): Whatever may be the demand, he has said in this connection that subsidy was given not merely to industrial centres, but to all urban and rural areas. Is that a fact ? Was subsidy given to those rural

843PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES areas where there was a large heavy deficit in the country as a whole, in accordance with the recommendation of the first Food Policy Committee ? Shri C. D. Deshmukh: My point was that the subsidy was not confined only to the industrial areas except during last year. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: My contention has been that because you cannot do the very best, let not the better be the enemy of the good. Do whatever good you can; if you cannot do it better, the country will be prepared to excuse you, because of your limited resources. But because you are not preparing to do even the good, when you agree to do it, by making a provision of Rs. 25 crores in the Budget, I think the public will have a legitimate right to complain. Sir, I would like to draw the attention of the Finance Minister to what the Chancellor of the Exchenquer has done in England in the course of his Budget. He knows, I think, much better than I do. I have collected my facts from newspapers and other magazines where I have been able to find a certain analysis of the Budget presented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the House of Commons. Now, Sir, confining our attention to the matter of food subsidy, I find that in the year 1950 in England, the food subsidy was £480 million. In the last Budget the subsidy has been reduced—there has been a cut of £160 million. Well, so far as this part of the Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is concerned, probably the Hon. Finance Minister may take comfort in the fact that after all he is not doing something different from what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done in England. But if you look at the other side of the picture of the Budget presented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in England—taking the other side, the counter-blancing proposals of the Chancellor in England,—I find that while the subsidy has been reduced, there has been an increase in income-tax relief to the extent of £2.228 million. Secondly, there has been an increase in family allowances to the extent of £37 million. There has been a considerable increase in pensions. There has been an enormous increase in the housing

844 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES subsistence. Now, all these reliefs which have been provided for by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget beyond question have the effect of increasing the purchasing power of the consumer. If there is so much increase in the purchasing power of the consuming community, it matters very little if the subsidy has been reduced by £167 million. What are the reliefs that our Hon. Friend the Finance Minister has provided for in his Budget ? Nothing. The level of taxation, whether of direct or indirect character, is just the same. The purchasing power of the people remains where it was. In addition to that, he is now increasing the cost of food. This I find to be a fundamental difference in the approach of the Hon. Finance Minister to the problems of the people and that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think my Hon. friend the Finance Minister may well consider whether he might not copy something from what the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to do in England for increasing the welfare of the people. Now, Sir, I have not been able to exactly understand what position the Hon. Finance Minister proposes to take. But I want to put it in the best light because I know he is an honest person with the greatest good of the people at his heart. What is he trying to do ? So far as I have been able to understand the policy of the Government of India with regard to food, I do not think that the Hon. Finance Minister is opposed to subsidy. If I put his position correctly as I understand it, he is in favour of subsidy, but his position seems to be that the subsidy instead of being granted to the consumer ought to be granted to the producer, either in the form of grow more food grants or in some other way. His object, logically speaking—I do not find any difficulty in accepting its validity—is that if you produce more food in the country, prices will fall, consumers will benefit and subsidy to the consumer may then not be necessary. I believe that I have stated his position somewhat correctly if I have understood it. He wants subsidy, but he wants it to be given to the producer and not to the consumer. 9-00 A.M.

845PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES Well, Sir, that may be one kind of approach, different though it may be from the line of approach which some of us take. The question I think that we have to ask with regard to this attitude is this : Which is going to benefit the people quickly ? So far as this subsidy for the grow more food policy is concerned, I do not think that it could be contended by the Government that that subsidy has been of any consequence so far as the production of food is concerned. I think it is not necessary for Members of the Opposition to cite any authority when we know as a matter of fact that the Reserve Bank, in one of the investigations which it undertook, reported that the grow more food policy has been a complete failure. Obviously, therefore, the policy of not giving subsidy to the consumer, but giving it to the producer, has not produced the effect desired by the Hon. Finance Minister. The second thing which I find why this emphasis on the grow more food has failed is because of the contradictory policy which the Food Department or the Government of India, has been following. On the one hand, they have been giving subsidy to farmers and others to provide more food. At the same time, they are giving encouragement for the production of what are called cash crops, which are every moment competing with the production of food. A farmer finds it much more to his advantage to produce cotton-seeds, black pepper and things of that sort. He does not care for the growing of more food. Surely, if the Government’s objective—and firm objective—is to produce food, Government ought to have taken some steps in order to curb the tendency on the part of the farmers to produce something other than food. That, Government has not done. The result is that we have in this country two competing economic activities so far as agriculture is concerned, the cash crops versus food production. The result is that notwithstanding the Grow More Food Campaign and the amount of money that has been spent, we have not been able to produce more food so as to make any impression upon the food prices. The question that I would like to ask the Hon. the Finance Minister is this. Would he or would he not realise that if his object is to reduce prices by the production of more food, and if that object has failed,

846 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES would he still continue to penalise the consumer and not give him any subsidy or offer him any kind of relief from the distress from which he is suffering ? That is the point. There is no dispute that some kind of subsidy is necessary in this country in the situation in which we find ourselves. The whole question is, at what point the blood may be supplied, at what point the subsidy may be given, to the producer or the consumer. I make this observation in the hope that the Hon. the Finance Minister will reconsider the line that he has been pursuing, namely, that our immediate problem could be solved more by giving subsidy to the producer and not to the consumer. He may succeed. As we know, originally, our Government, when I was a member of it, had announced that we must achieve self-sufficiency by the year 1952. Our Prime Minister, day in and day out, emphasised that after 1952 we shall not import a single grain of food from outside. Today, I think I am right in saying that the Government of India have realisd that reaching self-sufficiency in 1952 was an idle dream. They have now proclaimed that we will achieve it by 1956. God only knows. The target is always receding; it goes back and back. We do not know for how many years the consumers in this country will have to undergo this agony and allow the Finance Minister and the Minister of Food to delay the thing, by trying as if in a laboratory, the various ideas, the various proposals and the various schemes they have in their mind. I do not wish to dilate upon this subject any more. Sir, I would now say a few words with regard to the General Budget as a whole. The Budget undoubtedly in every country is an expression of the function which a Government undertakes towards its people. There was once a time in this country when the function of the British Government was to collect taxes and to maintain law and order. The welfare of the public, the well-being of the people, their educational advancement, public health, unemployment, or any of those remedies and reliefs, which were now found functioning on such a large scale in the Budgets of the various European countries, had no place. Not only they had no place in the Government but the Government itself had not accepted any liability on that