THE JOINT COMMITTEE AND ITS FINDINGS
By LORD EUSTACE PERCY, M.P.
IT is difficult, when one has been a member of a Com- mittee, to discuss impartially one's own conclusions ; it is impossible, when one has been a member of the majority, to do justice to the views of one's colleagues with whom one has differed. All one can hope to do is to throw some light on the reasons which led the majority to their conclusions. The Report sets them out with what many people may regard as disconcerting frankness.
It is nowhere more frank than in discussing Provincial Autonomy. The Provinces should have responsible government on the English model, and no government can be responsible unless it is responsible for law and order. But the essence of English parliamentary govern- ment is the co-existence of a strong executive with a popular legislature. This essential balance cannot he struck by a written Constitution ; it is an affair of gradual development. And India stands at a very early stage in that development. Indian public life lacks certain of the basic elements which have made English parliamentary government a success. At the stage which she has reached, a written Constitution cannot, therefore, vest executive power in the Governor-in-Council, . as in Dominion constitutions. Executive power must be vested in the Governor personally. The Constitution Act can impose on the Governor the obligation to appoint Ministers from the Provincial Legislature to advise him ; but it cannot define to what extent he is to be guided by their advice.
On the contrary, it must strengthen the execu- tive by asserting the Governor's personal responsi- bility to the Crown, through the Governor-General, in two directions. First, the Governor must retain certain powers in his own hands, particularly what in the United States are known as " pOlice powers." He must be the head of the Public Services ; he must have timely access to all departmental information, special control over police organization and judicial appoint- ments, and a special power to take into his own hands any branch of government necessary to combat subversive movements. Secondly, he must be held personally responsible for certain broad issues of policy. It is in this second sphere of " special responsibilities " that the balance between executive and legislature must be struck. It must be struck in the relations between the Governor and his Ministers, and these must be regulated, not by the Act, but by the Governor's Instrument of Instructions.
It is this flexible Instrument which will breathe the life of responsible government into a body politic whose statutory skeleton is Elizabethan rather than Victorian: So vital an Instrument must obviously be approved by both Houses of Parliament. The breath of life will come to animate the body as Ministers come to realize that the responsibility for order and justice " is a responsibility which no executive can share with any legislature; however answerable it may be to that legislature for the manner of its discharge."
If the Committee's first preoccupation is thus the realization in practice of the English conception of a strong executive, their second is the unity of British India. To some critics of the White Paper, Provincial
Lord Eustace Percy, in addition to his membership of the Select Committee of the two Houses on Indian Constitutional Reform, was Chairman of the Committee which visited India in 1932 to study a report on the question of Federal Finance.
Autonomy has seemed a safe and simple policy. But unity is " perhaps the greatest gift which British rule has conferred on India." The policy of Provincial Autonomy is in line with the long-established tendencies of British government in India, but it does threaten to disrupt her unity. In the sphere of the Governor- General's and the Governor's special powers and special responsibilities, complete unity will be preserved. In foreign affairs, in defence, both against external aggression and internal unrest, in t he protection of minorities, and so on, the Governor-General's writ will run, via the Governors, throughout British India. But, as responsible government becomes an increasing reality in the Pro- vinces, is each accentuation of . the responsibility of Provincial Ministers to mean a corresponding accentua- tion of disunion ? If not, how is unity to be expressed in terms of parliamentary government ? Obviously, in the first place, through the Central Legislature. But no nation in the history of the world has ever expressed the unity of more than 250 million people in a single popularly elected legislature. The United States, faced with a task hardly half as big, would have failed to solve it apart from her iron party machine system.
The Central Legislature at Delhi cannot, therefore, be a directly elected one. It is, in fact, in the highest degree doubtful whether direct election is the best method of constituting the Provincial Legislatures. But the great weakness of India is the absence of local bodies which can form the basis of a system of indirect election. Indians will have to face this problem as the franchise is extended in the future. Meanwhile, the Provincial Legislatures must be directly elected, and the Central Legislature must be elected by the Provincial Legis- lature's. Is that Central Legislature to have any con- stitutional control over the Central Executive ? Yes, in so far as such control is in pari materiel with the responsibilities of Provincial Ministers. There is one great function of the Central Government which is intimately related with the responsibilities of Provincial Ministers, namely, taxation. Central and Provincial Governments must live largely out of the same purse ; autocratic taxation at the Centre combined with par- liamentary taxation in the Provinces would create chaos. And Central financial policy involves Central commercial policy. • In this sphere, then, an attempt should be made to introduce responsibility at the Centre, on the same lines as in the Provinces, and subject to similar reserva- tions of the Governor-General's responsibility for safe- guarding financial stability, for ensuring the due payment of public salaries and pensions, and for preventing the use of commercial policy for political pressure.
But responsibility for finance and commerce cannot be conferred on a Central Legislature representing only British India ; for financial and commercial policy affects India as 'a whole. Here comes in the problem of an 'All-India Federation—a distinct problem, the Committee insist, however it may interact with the constitutional problems of British India. All-India Federation would be convenient, for without it the irrepressible conflict in. fmanee between Centre and Provinces could not be reconciled. But the issue of All-India Federation must be decided on its merits apart from this. The determining argument. in. favour of it . is unity of economic" policy. m The old akeshift economic adjustments between British India and the States cannot meet the needs of the coming .era of financial stress and economic organization. And, if All-India Federation is to be accepted as an ultimate ideal, it should be accepted as an immediate policy ; for as an immediate policy it is open to no objections which cannot equally be urged against it as an ultimate ideal.
This summary depicts, as nearly as any short article can, the central line of the Committee's thought. Their many other recommendations branch naturally from that line. The women's franchise is to be extended, as a new force which may do much to supply the missing factors in Indian public life. The importance of clarifying the status of the Provincial civil service from domination by a legislature is the absolute condition of executive strength. Inter-Provincial organs of joint deliberatioa must supplement the federal division of functions between Provinces and Centre, in order to preserve unity. For the same reason, there must be a regular method of deciding inter-Provincial disputes in such matters water rights. • And so on-. This line of thought is. of course, essentially undiplomatic. Each constitutional problem is considered on its structural merits, rather than with reference to Indian aspirations or to English doubts. But those aspirations are, one thinks, generously recog. nized and those doubts fairly faced ; and it may at least be hoped that the three lines of aspiration, doubt and cold reason will be found, in fact, to converge.
Previous page
