White Paper on Indian States (1950)/Part 8
PART VIII
Consolidation
162. The benefits that the people of the States will derive from the administrative integration of States either in the form of their merger into larger units or their consolidation into sizeable units, are manifold. The slenderness of the resources of small units, most of them hardly larger than estates but enjoying varying degrees of sovereignty, and their general aversion to neighbourly co-operation, put it beyond the power of their Rulers to give their subjects the advantages of good and progressive government. Existence of a large number of small units led to unnecessary multiplication of governing agencies which necessitated the maintenance of numerous ornamental and dignified institutions. Most of these States could never provide efficient services or maintain anything like modern standards of administration; continuance of separate governmental institutions in such States led only to the dissipation of national wealth. The integration of these units will enable them to pool their resources for the provision of adequate administrative services over reasonable groups or tracts for the general benefit of the people. It will also make it possible to provide adequate social services and modern amenities to the people of these States, which were beyond their resources as separate small units.
163. Because of the inadequacy of resources and the jurisdictional changes, communications in most of the small States have been in a very primitive condition. Internal trade was rendered difficult by the export, import and other duties which the various States levied. The administration of justice and maintenance of law and order were greatly handicapped because of the administrative and political fragmentation resulting from the existence of a large number of small States. Each of these States had its own laws and taxation structure, and the bewildering multiplicity of their revenue and other systems ruled out any kind of constitutional and administrative uniformity. These conditions encouraged extensive smuggling, black-marketing, crime and other anti-social activities. In such a set-up any kind of co-ordinated development, opening up of economic potentialities or any form of real progress was hardly possible. The administrative integration of States has solved all these perplexing political and administrative problems. In the new set-up there should be no room for special privileges of classes, immunities from taxation, judicial and quasi-judicial privileges, trade monopolies, and other feudal practices.
164. Thus from the point of view of good government, popular welfare and national economy, the administrative integration of States provides, for the first time, a real and effective approach to the problem of States. The execution of the Covenants and the Instruments of Merger, however, does not by itself justify the hopes implicit in integration. The administrative integration of States will fail to secure its objective if it does not bring about a psychological integration of the people. Local affiliations, which impede the growth of common nationhood, will be eliminated only if the people are enabled to feel that by becoming citizens of bigger, more progressive and resourceful units, a real change for the better has come into their lives. The people must feel that not only power has come to their hands but the very set-up of their lives has undergone an appreciable change for the better.
165. The integration of States, therefore, though in itself an achievement of tremendous importance to the future of the country, is, viewed in the right perspective, something in the nature of an opportunity rather than fulfilment. Positive, co-ordinated and sustained action is necessary to establish the conditions in which the people could secure adequate administrative and social services and full opportunities of progress and development.
Steps towards Organic Integration
166. In the case of the Provincially merged and Centrally merged States the authority for exercising the powers of administration and legislation were originally derived from the Extra-Provincial Jurisdiction Act, 1947. This Act enabled the Government of India to exercise the necessary powers in States where, under an agreement, jurisdiction power and authority, were transferred to the Government of India. This procedure was a half-way house between complete separateness and full integration. Under this arrangement, a law passed by the Dominion Parliament did not automatically extend to these States but had to be applied to them by a notification under the Extra-Provincial Jurisdiction Act. While suitable as a transitional arrangement, this expedient did not meet the needs of a permanent and organic integration.
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