For the great experiment in the provincial sphere, the eight provinces
of Bombay, Madras, Bengal, the United Provinces, Behar and Orissa, the
Punjab, the Central Provinces, and Assam, were deemed to be already
ripe. Burma (which is not really India at all, and whose people belong
to another race and to another stage of political development), the
North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan (which for strategical
reasons must remain under the direct control of the Government of
India), and a few smaller areas, whose populations are altogether too
backward, were not to be touched at present. The essential feature of
the scheme was the division of the functions of the Provincial
Government into two categories: the one comprising what are now termed
"the reserved subjects," _i.e._ those with which the maintenance of
peace and order and good government is immediately bound up; and the
other, those which, though less vital, very closely affect the daily
life and common interests of the people, and which were to be called
"the transferred subjects," because it was proposed to transfer at once
the largest possible measure of power and responsibility in regard to
them to exclusively Indian shoulders. While all essential power and
responsibility in regard to "the reserved subjects" were to remain
vested in the Governor-in-Council, _i.e._ the executive body consisting
of the Governor and (under the new scheme) one British and one Indian
member of Council, real power and responsibility for dealing with "the
transferred subjects" were to be conferred on Indian Ministers
accountable to a Legislative Council in which there was to be a large
Indian non-official majority, elected also on the broadest possible
franchise. The Provincial Government would thus itself be divided into
two compartments: in the one the Governor-in-Council, responsible as
heretofore to the Government of India and to the Secretary of State,
_i.e._ the British Parliament; in the other the Governor--but not "in
Council"--acting with Indian Ministers responsible to an Indian
legislature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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