Vol. 2 · pages 406–410

387PROVINCIAL AUTONOMY matters in which it must have such a right must include the reservation, the allowance and disallowance of provincial legislation, the appointment and removal of Provincial Governors and their instructions, the amendment of provincial constitutions and other matters which exclusively belong to the Provincial Governments. What about matters which do not exclusively belong to either Government ? I suggest that in cases in which the Central Government has paramount power of legislation, the Central Government is the sole representative of India. But as to matters within concurrent jurisdiction of the Central and Provincial Government, the Provincial Government must have a right to direct representation. 117. To make the political existence of the Provinces as an entity independent of the Government of India a reality, the representation of the Crown in the Provincial Executive and the Provincial Legislature should be made more manifest than it is at present Under the existing law the Secretary of State has placed the Crown quite in the background and has in fact usurped its place. The office of the Secretary of State for India is analogous to the office of the Secretary of State for Colonies. But the two play quite different roles. The Secretary of State for Colonies occupies no place in the constitutional law of the Dominions. The constitutional laws of all the Dominions are emphatic in their declaration that their Executive and Legislative Government is vested in the Crown. Section 2 of the Government of India Act gives a definite legal status to the Secretary of State. So prominent is the position given to the Secretary of State that he has altogether eclipsed the Crown. Indeed, except for a passing reference in Section 1 there is no mention of the Crown anywhere in the Government of India Act. The reasons for this are no doubt historical and go back to the passing of the Regulation Act of 1773 when the East India Company disputed the right of the Crown to the possessions it had acquired in the East. Whatever be the historical differences the fact remains that the Dominion laws do not recognise the Secretary of State while the Indian law does. The result is that the Secretary of State for Colonies does not govern the Dominions. His duty is to advise the Crown to allow or disallow particular acts of the Dominion Governments. The Secretary of State on the other hand is not merely the adviser of the Crown. By Section 2 of the Government of India Act he has been given the fullest powers of government. 118. The provisions contained in Section 2 cannot be justified under any circumstance. They are derogatory to the position of the Crown and are a perversion of the true position of a Secretary of State. They gave a false picture of the position of the Provincial Governments. Whatever might have been the justification of the provisions in Section 2 before 1919 the changes introduced in that year have removed it altogether. The powers of government having been transferred to the people it is no longer possible to retain those powers in the hands of the Secretary of State. To do so would be to introduce a system of double government fraught with

388 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES the possibilities of serious conflict. I therefore recommend that section ( 2) of the Government of India Act should be deleted and two new sections of the following tenor should be added :— (1) The Legislative power of the Province shall be vested in a Provincial Parliament which will consist of the King and a Council of the King and a Council of Representatives and which is hereinafter called “The Provincial Legislature”. (2) The Executive power of the Province is vested in the King and is exercisable by the Governor as the King’s representative and extends to the execution and maintenance of the constitution and of the laws of the Province. Sections of similar import regarding the position of the Crown in the Government of India should be added to Act of 1919. Such a change will not only help to place the Crown and the Secretary of State in their true position, but they will also help to bring the constitutional law of India in line with the constitutional law of the Dominions.

SECTION V PUBLIC SERVICES I. Reorganisation of Services 119. Separation of Services. —The present organisation of the public services in India is the outcome of the recommendations of the Aitchison Commission which inquired into the Public Service of India in 1886-87. Prior to the appointment of the Commission the great bulk of the civil posts of higher responsibility and emoluments were filled by recruits from Europe and that Commission was expressly directed to suggest measures which would “do full justice to the claims of natives of India to higher and more extensive employment in the Public Service” of their country. The Commission held the view that the Civil Service should be only “a Corps d’elite” and consequently recommended that the recruitment of officials in England should be substantially reduced and the higher appointments so set free transferred to a service locally recruited in India. As a result of these recommendations officers recruited in England formed Imperial Services and the officers locally recruited formed the Provincial Services. The conditions of appointments in regard to pay, leave and pension of officers belonging to the two services were to be fixed on independent grounds and were not necessarily to have any relation to each other. This division into Imperial and Provincial obtains in most of the Civil Services of the country which it is needless to detail. What is important to bear in mind is that the division was made to distinguish officers recruited in England and officers recruited in India and not as might be understood from the description, in order to distinguish officers placed under the Government of India and liable to serve all over India from officers placed under Local Governments and liable to serve only in specified provinces. For instance the officers belonging to the Provincial services in the Telegraph (Engineering) and the Survey of India are directly under the Government of India and not confined to any particular province while officers in the Imperial Service in the Education and the Police Departments are allotted to different provinces. In my opinion time has arrived when each Province should be free to organise its own civil service. For this the All-India character of the services must cease. There should be Central Civil Service recruited and maintained in response to its own needs by the Central Government to run various departments which are handed over

390 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES to it by the Government of India without imposing upon its members the liability to serve under any of the Provincial Governments. Similarly there should be a Provincial Civil Service recruited and maintained in response to its own needs by every Provincial Government exclusively for its own employment. This recommendation cannot be said to involve any substantial change in the system. For although members of the Imperial Service and Provincial Service are liable to serve in any part in India, their All-India character is only nominal. For the cases in which a member of the Civil Service whether Imperial or Provincial has been called upon to serve in a Province different from the one in which he was originally posted are few. Almost all of them continued to work to the end in the same Province in which they were placed in the beginning. That being the case the reform which I have suggested will involve no change. It will only recognise facts as they exist. 120. The grounds on which I press for this reform in the organisation of the Civil Service are many. First of all such a separation of the services into those which are Central in the sense that they are in the employment of the Government of India and those which are Provincial in the sense that they are in the employment of the Provincial Government has this immense advantage, namely that it is a reform which is eminently called for by the change in the character of the Provincial Government. If the present system was continued, ministerial responsibility would be difficult of realisation. Public Servants in India according to Section 96(B) of the Government of India Act no doubt hold their position during the pleasure of the Crown. But it must be remembered that the Act does not allow the Ministers the power to decide when His Majesty should be pleased to remove him from office. Although that power is given to the authority who appoints him yet the dismissed officer has been given a right of appeal to the Secretary of State. Not only the Minister has no right of dismissing an officer, but he cannot even punish him with impunity, because it is provided in the Act that if any officer appointed by the Secretary of State in Council thinks himself wronged by an order of an official superior in a Governor’s Province he has a right to complain to the Governor and the Governor by the Act as well as by the instrument of instructions is bound to inquire and pass such an order as may appear to him just and equitable. These provisions must make any Minister, however strong he may be, quite helpless against a recalcitrant member of the Civil Service who refuses to carry out the policy for which the Minister is responsible to the legislature in accordance with its wishes. Ministerial responsibility requires that a Minister shall have power effectively to deal with an erring officer working under him. He must also have the power to decide how many officers he must have and to what particular post any of them might be appointed. The existing provisions do not permit him any of the powers he must stand in sore need of. This anomaly was recognised by the Lee Commission which was appointed soon after the reforms were introduced. That Commission

391PUBLIC SERVICES recommended that no further recruitment should take place in the transferred departments on an All-India basis and the personnel required for them should in future be recruited and appointed by Provincial Governments. As a result of this recommendation Provinces have been empowered to frame rule for the recruitment of officers who will take the place of the existing All-India Service Officers in these services operating in the transferred department when the latter vacate. The reform I have suggested is merely an extension of the same principle which the necessities of the case have compelled the authorities to accept. The extension cannot now be delayed for the reason that under a fully responsible system of Government the distinction between Reserved and Transferred will have vanished. 121. The second advantage of a separate and independent Provincial Civil Service will be the liberty it will give to the Provincial Governments to alter the cadre of the services belonging to the Province. The draw-back of the All-India system is that a Minister who is satisfied that there are several superfluous posts ordinarily held by the members of the All-India Service and a larger number the duties of which can be and in the temporary vacancies have been efficiently discharged by the more moderately paid officers of the Provincial Services, and who might therefore be convinced of abolishing such a post or transferring it to the cadre of a Provincial Service finds himself powerless to do so. For, under the Act he has no such power. All that he can do is to let such post remain in abeyance or to let an officer of the Provincial Service concerned officiate for a lengthened period. But even here his powers are limited. For, under the rules he cannot do this beyond fixed number of months without the sanction of the Secretary of State. This is a very serious limitation arising out of the All-India Organisation of the Services in that it prevents the attainment of the ends of economy for which the Reformed Council has been clamouring from its very inception. 122. These are not the only advantages of an independent system of Provincial Civil Service. The All-India character of the service imposes upon the provinces a uniformity in the conditions of employment in, relation to pay, leave allowances, promotions and pensions. I contend that such uniformity must work great hardships upon the resources of comparatively poor Provinces. They are obliged to pay more for the service than they can reasonably afford. Nor can it be said that uniform scale of salary in all Provinces is necessary to ensure equality in the standard of living. It is notorious that owing to differences in local conditions the same standards of comfort can be had in two different Provinces on quite different salary. If that is the case there is no reason why should uniformity in pay be enforced when such uniformity is either burdensome or unjust. 123. The requirement of uniformity in the conditions of service also arises directly out of the All-India character of the Civil Service and it will not vanish unless the service ceases to have that character. The constitution of an independent Provincial Civil Service is a means for accomplishing