The Insurance & Finance Review. January 1931

The deficits in the central budgets have added considerably to the unproductive debt of the country while the blundering currency policy of the Goverment has caused enormous losses to the Indian Exchequer and led to a depletion of the reserves. [...] If a saving of two crores of rupees is obtained by means of retrenchment on the civil side of the budget in the course of the next ten years one-half of the amount may be set apart for meeting the additional cost involved in the performance of the new duties the other half being made available for the provinces. [...] Therefore one-half of the total proceeds of the both the income-tax and the super-tax should be surrendered to the provinces the distribution being made on the principle of origin. [...] Even if it be granted for the sake of argument that the whole of the duty falls on the foreign consumer the claim of the people of the province to the productivity of a valable article cannot be lightly brushed aside. [...] On the contrary the circumstance that the Central Government is interested only in the proceeds of the tax and not in the welfare of jute-growers exposes it to the temptation of levying in times of financial difficulty unduly"THE FUTURE OF INDIAN FINANCE 289 high rates of duty which may threaten the very existence of the industry.