Vol. 15 · pages 866–870

847PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES account. We thought and we hoped that when this country became independent, that aspect of the matter would change, that the Government would not be merely a Government of an agency to collect taxes and a magistrate to punish people for wrongful action, that the Government would do something more, that the Government would assume the function which all civilised Governments have assumed in the 20th century. Sir, can anyone scanning the Budget which has been presented to this House say that they can find any trace of any other functions, which all modern civilised nations and States assume to themselves, reflected in the Budget of the Finance Minister ? I can find nothing. We are still repeating the old history of the British, namely, to collect taxes, to punish offenders. No provision is made for all the social benefits which are conferred upon the poorer and the lower classes in other countries in the world. I want to ask the Hon. the Finance Minister : “Can he promise us, as he had been promising in the case of the food subsidy, that we will be self-sufficient in food in 1952, if not in 1952 it shall come in 1956, if not in 1956 it shall come in the year 1960 ?” There is some hope, so long as there is a fixed day or a promised day of the arrival of the new regime. Can he tell us that we can tread upon the path foreign countries have been following so far as social services are concerned ? He has said none. The whole thing in the Budget, to put it in a nut-shell—it has been put, I know, by other speakers before me—the crux of the whole matter in this country is that the Army is eating up into the vitals of the funds that are necessary for the well-being of this country. We have, in a total Budget of Rs. 404 crores, a sum of nearly Rs. 200 crores spent on the Army. It is difficult to understand this position. Sir, when peace came, an order of demobolisation was passed. It was decided by the then British Government that the Army of India shall be reduced. What do we find ? We find that in the year 1947, the revenue of the Government of India was somewhere about Rs. 172 crores. I am speaking of the Budget for the 8 months that was then presented from August 1947 to April 1948. The Military Budget then was Rs. 90 crores. Our revenue today has grown to Rs. 404 crores, and our military expenditure has also grown

848 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES to nearly Rs. 200 crores. It is an extraordinary thing that as your revenue rises, your military expenditure also rises. My view was that the reverse should be the process, that your military expenditure ought to go down. If you can reduce the military expenditure by a modest sum of Rs. 50 crores, how much good we can do to our people ? We can apply this reduction of Rs. 50 crores in the Army Budget to river valley projects. The Damodar Valley Project could be completed within 3 years out of our revenue Budget instead of having to go to foreign countries for aid. If we could spend that amount of Rs. 50 crores out of the military Budget for the betterment of our own people, what amount of good we can achieve ? But I have not been able to understand why the Government of India has been consistently and regularly increasing the military Budget. Sir, it is an extraordinary thing from another point of view. We have been told that our foreign policy is a policy of peace and friendship. My hon. Friend, Diwan Chaman Lall, called it the Nehru doctrine. If that is the object of the Nehru doctrine, it is a welcome doctrine provided it was observed by all. Now, if the object of the foreign policy of this country is to maintain friendship and peace throughout the world, I want to know who are our enemies against whom we want to maintain this huge army at a huge cost of Rs. 197 crores. Shri J. R. Kapoor (Uttar Pradesh) : Our next door neighbour. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar: I do not know that. If we were informed that our relations with certain foreign countries were not happy, that there might be any time a danger to our safety and to our security, it would be possible for most of us to agree that rather than wait for the arrival of the danger, we should keep the Army ready so that in an emergency we may face the danger squarely. But we are told that we have no enemy at all in this world. Then, why this army is maintained, I do not quite know. Secondly, the only possible enemy, if one may use that world, is probably Pakistan. And that too, on account of Kashmir. Now, with regard to Kashmir, I hope that this House will have a full

849PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES opportunity of discussing that question. I did not have time to say anything, nor did I think it right to spend just a few moments on a problem so great as that of Kashmir. But surely the matter is within the charge of the U.N.O., and I do not think that Pakistan would be so foolish as to invade Kashmir or to invade this country in the teeth of the U.N.O. decision on the subject. Therefore, again, why are you maintaining this Army? I am quite unable to understand the point. Then, Sir, on our part we never seem to be able to realise that the sooner we settle this Kashmir problem the better for us, because if the excuse for this enormous is increase in our Defence Budget is to be attributed to the Kashmir tangle, is it not our duty to do something, to contribute something, positively in order to bring that dispute to an end ? I cannot expatiate on the subject, but so far as I have been able to study the part played by the Government of India in connection with the negotiations that have been taking place on the settlement of the Kashmir issue, I am sorry to say that I have not read a single word which I can describe as a positive and not a negative suggestion on the part of the Government of India to settle this question. All that they are dealing with is the question of military allotment. The question of plebiscite is in no way new in the history of the world. One need not go back to the ancient past to find precedents for settling questions of this sort by plebiscite. After the First World War, I certainly remember there were two questions to be settled by plebiscite. One w as the question of Upper Silesia and the other was the question of Alsace-Lorraine. Both these questions were settled by plebiscite, and I am sure that my hon. Friend Shri Gopalaswami Ayyangar, with his mature wisdom and sagacity, must be knowing of this. It is not possible for us to borrow something from the line of action taken by the League of Nations with regard to the plebiscite in Upper Silesia and Alsace-Lorraine which we can usefully carry into the Kashmir dispute and have the matter settled quickly so that we can release Rs. 50 crores from the Defence Budget and utilise it for the benefit of our people ?

850 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES I do not want to say much more, but I do want to say that most of us are feeling very keenly that the Defence Budget is the greatest stumbling block in the path of the welfare of this country. There is one other thing to which I would like to draw the attention of the Finance Minister. He has already indicated in the course of his Budget speech that the prospect for this country, so far as taxation is concerned in the future, is not a very happy one. He himself has admitted that our incometax revenue would not remain at the same level at which it has remained for the last two years. He knows very well that the export duty, which forms a very large part of the present revenue of the country, is no longer to be regarded as a permanent part of the revenue structure of this country. Export duties, which in all countries are of an unusual sort, extraordinary in their character, never can be regarded as a natural part of the tax structure of a country and depend upon conditions in foreign countries. The moment those conditions vary, you have got to vary the tax. You may meet with a situation where you may have to abandon such duties completely. The fear which I feel on account of the prospect in the decline of revenue is this : How is the Finance Minister going to make good the losses that might occur by the reduction of certain items on the revenue side ? Will he cut into the Defence Department’s Budget, or will he cut into the Budgets of the other Departments which are ministering to the social welfare of the people ? I have no idea. If the opinion in favour of the retention of the armed forces at the present level of expenditure prevails, our conditions, so far as the welfare of the people are concerned, will deteriorate considerably. I want the Finance Minister to take note of this fact and tell us something about what he would do when such a prospect presents itself to him in the concrete.

851PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (46) *ANDHRA STATE BILL, 1953 Mr. Chairman: Motion moved. “That the Bill to provide for the formation of the State of Andhra the increasing of the areas of the State of Mysore and the diminishing of the area of the State of Madras, and for matter connected therewith, as passed by the House of the People, be taken into consideration.” Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (Bombay): Mr. Chairman, this is a Bill the object of which is to create a new State for the Andhras. As such it is the subject matter of the Andhras themselves. Others who are not Andhras can only take part in it in a general way, and solely because this new Province is a portent of probably some other linguistic provinces to come into existence. It is only because of the feeling of the latter kind that I have stood up today to say a few words. Sir, when one goes into the Bill, one is very much puzzled as to whether one should congratulate the Government on the Bill such as has been brought forward before the house, or whether one should congratuate the Andhras who are clamouring for a separate Province. As anyone in this House knows, as soon as the Congress Party was organised and had a constitution in the year 1921, the first thing it did was to incorporate the principle of linguistic provinces. I have no idea that at any time from the year 1921 up to the year 1949 or these about, the Congress either ever withdrew that principle from its constitution or regretted having entered that principle in its constitution. In 1949 I believe—if I am wrong my friends will correct me—but I think that is about the year, when the Drafting Committee was sitting, and one Member of then Assembly tabled a Resolution for the formation of the linguistic provinces. I was in charge of the Law Department and as such the Resolution fell within my portfolio. I had to * P. D. Vol. 4 (Council of States) of 1953, Part 1, 2nd September 1953, pp. 864-79.