Indian Statutory Commission. Selections from memoranda & Oral Evidence by Non-Officials (Part I)

The Committee of the Bombay Chamber of Comerce desire to avail themselves of the invitation issued by the Statutory Commission and to submit a memorandum on the subject of 6 (c) of the Appedix to the invitation to submit memoranda. [...] 4. The Bombay case against the Meston Settlement is based on two distinct grounds; firstly that the distribution of surplus revenues assigned to the provinces of India over and above the Provincial revenue existing at the time of the Reforms was determined in a haphazard manner and bore no rlation to the needs of the Provinces to the total taxation derived from those Provinces and to the reso [...] 8. In regard to the theoretical basis of the Meston Settlement it is contended that the origin of all the subsequent trouble is to be found in the academic insistence by the framers of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report on the theory of complete separation of the resources of the Central and Provincial Governments. [...] It is not reasonable to expect the poor cultivators of the Presidency to contribute a large portion of the funds required for the eduction of the industrial artisan classes for the medical relief of those classes and for the maintenance of law and order amongst the mixed populations of the largo industrial cities. [...] In regard to the question of the theoretically correct distribution of taxes between central and prvincial the Committee recommended apart from a transfer to the provinces of a share of the income tax the transfer of non-judicial stamps and the excise duty on country-made foreign liquors and possibly the revenue now derived from excise opium to the Central Government.