Presidential Address of Dr. Pramatha Nath Banerjea of the Indian Economic Conference at Lahore

Agriculture gives employment to nearly three-fourths of the entire population of the country, and its improvement ought to be one of the primary duties of the State in India,, while co-opera-6 THE FUTURE OF rNDIAN FINANCE tive credit is the chief means of rescuing the agriculturist from the clutches of the rapacious money-lender. [...] If a saving of two crores of rupees i obtained by means of retrenchment on the civil side of the budge in the course of the next ten years, one-half of the amount ma be set apart for meeting the additional cost involved in the per formance of the new duties, the other half being made availabl to the provinces. [...] But, as the Taxation Enquiry Committee point out, there exists a possibi- lity that, in certain conditions of trade, a portion of the export duty may fall on the producer. " 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 producti- vity of a valuable article cannot be lightly brushed aside. [...] On the contrary, the circum- stance 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 high rates of duty which may threaten the very existence of the industry. [...] In view of the acute distress of the jute-growers, the Acting Finance Member of the Government of India was, a short while ago, approached with an appeal for financial assistance, but he gave the reply that it was not the concern of the Central Government So it comes to this that, while the benefit of the growth of jute goes to the Government of India, the duty of assisting the deve- lopment of th