Page:The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India.djvu/16

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INTRODUCTION

enough groups the accounts not under Imperial and Local but under (1) Imperial, and (2) Provincial, while the Financial Statements after 1921 cover only the Imperial Transactions. Nothing is more confusing to a beginner than the entrance of the new, and the exit of the old, categories of accounts.[1] The natural question that he will ask is, how did these different categories evolve, and how are they related to one another?

In the present study an endeavour is made to explain the rise and growth of one of them, namely, the "Provincial." But in order that there may be no difficulty in following the argument it is deemed advisable to preface this study with an outline defining its subject-matter and indicating the interrelations of the parts into which it is divided. To facilitate a thorough understanding of the subject the study is divided into four parts, each one dealing with the Origin, Development and Organization of Provincial Finance and the final form in which it

  1. It is surprising that the category of accounts, called "Excluded Local," which is to be found in the volume of Finance and Revenue Accounts, never appears in the Financial Statement. The author has not been able to trace the reason for its exclusion. In the Madras Manual (Vol. I, Chapter V, pp. 467–9) it is argued that the ground for the exclusion is technical and consists in the circumstance that the Excluded Funds are not collected by the ordinary revenue collecting agency of the Central Government and are not subject to its interference. Another technical ground may also be found in a ruling given in the third edition of the Civil Account Code (p. 137), according to which Funds were called Excluded, i.e. from the Financial Statement, because they were not required to be lodged in the Government Treasury. But a ruling on the same point given in the seventh and latest edition (p. 122) of the same seems to imply that every public fund must of necessity be lodged in a Government Treasury. The more probable explanation is that given in the Moral and Material Progress Report for 1882–3 (Part I, p. 107), where it is said that these funds have no place in General Finance because they "consist chiefly of special trusts and endowments."