LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IN PUNJAB

IN our last article on this subject, we made it quite clear that in determining representation of local bodies under a system of separate communal representation it is unjust to completely ignore the amount of monetary contribution made by each community towards the maintenance of those bodies. It may not be generally known that in England, from which country our institutions are largely borrowed, the franchise for elections to local bodies like the Education Board, the Water Board, the Local Board, the Board of Guardians, the Burail Board, and the Highway Boards, used, until very recently, to be determined largely by the taxable capacity of the inhabitants. Even today, and under the existing law a single person is in some cases entitled to as many as six votes in the case of urban Parishes. Here in India a Municipal Committee combines in itself all the several functions discharged by the various local boards in England. The English example, therefore, so far from supporting the distribution of the franchise merely on a numerical basis can rightly be held to be antagonistic to it.

We do not, however, wish to labour this obvious point any further. In fact the incidence of taxation forms but a minor point in the general body of our arguments against the reconstitution scheme of the Education Minister. A far more essential factor is the stake which the several communities respectively have in the success or otherwise of municipal government. Now it is an undeniable fact that non-Mahomedans constitute the majority of tradesmen, shopkeepers and merchants in most of the towns, and as such have an interest in their prosperity which is much greater than that of the other community.