Page:White Paper on Indian States (1950).pdf/48

 

86. The accession of the Indian States to the Dominion of India was the first phase of the process of fitting them into the constitutional structure of India. The second phase which rapidly followed, involved a process of two-fold integration, the consolidation of States into sizeable administrative units, and their democratization.

 

87. The small State had been the most vulnerable link in the chain of the Indian States. In 1933 the problem of consolidating some of the small States into local confederacies for the purpose of not only remedying their administrative deficiency, but also facilitating their inclusion in any federal arrangements applicable to India as a whole was considered, but was eventually dropped as impracticable.

88. In March 1939 Lord Linlithgow in his inaugural address to the Chamber of Princes stressed the desirability of the States with limited resources making arrangements for co-operative grouping for administrative purposes. The subject thereafter figured in all Chamber discussions and led to various co-operative grouping arrangements in different regions but these arrangements generally did not go beyond providing for common High Courts and common advisory staff for the Police force.

89. On 16th April, 1943, the Political Department issued a communique announcing the attachment with certain larger States of the small Western India States which collectively covered an area of 7,000 square miles with a population of 800,000. It announced the important principle that nothing which was not inherently capable of survival should be artificially perpetuated, and that the ultimate test of fitness for the survival of any State was its capacity to secure the welfare of its subjects. All these half-hearted measures hardly touched the fringe of the problem.

 

90. 'Hopes and aspirations', wrote the authors of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, thirty years ago, 'may overlap frontier lines like sparks across a street'. The events in the States since 15th August, 1947 have borne out the truth of this statement.

91. With the advent of independence, the popular urge in the States for attaining the same measure of freedom as was enjoyed by the people