THE PUNJAB BUDGET AND NON-CO-OPERATION

We have already drawn attention to the principal features of the Budget presented by Sir John Maynard to the Punjab Legislative Council about a fortnight ago. Apart from the actual estimate of revenue and expenditure, both for the current year and the next, the most noticeable thing in Sir Maynard’s speech is the extent to which it is overshadowed by non-co-operation. An extremist Anglo-Indian journal, while noticing Sir Malcolm Hailey’s recent speech in introducing the Government of India’s Financial Statement in the Legislative Assembly, complained that the Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Council had missed an opportunity of exhibiting the effect of non-co-operation upon the finances of the country. No such complaint could be made in respect of Sir Maynard’s speech, which, must be entirely after the heart of the journal, even if it was not the model it had before it when it read its lecture to Sir Malcolm Hailey. Sir Maynard, at any rate, has missed no opportunity of bringing in the non-co-operator, and has performed this task with a thoroughness which leaves nothing to be desired by the enemies of non-co-operation. Even in noticing so simple a thing as the demand for takkavi loans, the unprecedented character of which the Finance Member himself explains with clearness, he must have a word to say of “the misguided men who have forgotten what real misgovernment means and are doing their utmost to belittle the work of the Government and to persuade their fellow-countrymen to increase to the utmost the difficulties of its task.” He is reminded of the non-co-operator and his activities while referring to so gratifying a thing from his own point of view and the point of view of the Government as the proof which the general public gave of their confidence in it by freely placing their money in its hands.

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