Today is 150th anniversary of India's First Budget
One hundred and fifty years ago, on February 18, the first Budget speech was made in the Indian Legislative Council. It was made in Calcutta by James Wilson, the first to be Finance Member in the Viceroy's Council, in effect India's first Finance Minister.
This Budget speech did not exactly win him many friends – at least not from Madras. He is said to have introduced the modern concept of Income Tax in India. The businessmen were upset by the proposal, so were the princely and zamindari orders. But the loudest explosion came from the Governor of Madras, Sir Charles Trevelyan. He minuted, in effect, “Madras will not pay income tax.”
On this occasion, he objected to taxation because Madras, the senior settlement, had not been consulted by upstart Calcutta. He also wondered why the South, which had played little part in the Revolt of 1857, should be burdened with a tax that was described as being necessary to restore the economy of a country that had been damaged by what was to all intents and purposes a war. But not our war, Trevelyan seemed to be saying. Most tellingly of all, he emphasized that fundamental principle, ‘No taxation without (political) representation'. To all intents and purposes, he was encouraging Indian nationalism - in public!
As Assistant Secretary to the Treasury he was placed in charge of the administration of Government relief to the victims of the Irish Famine in the 1840s. In the middle of that crisis Trevelyan published his views on the matter. He saw the Famine as a "mechanism for reducing surplus population". He described the famine as "The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people" While these views appeared to be mitigated in another letter dated 29 April 1846 when Trevelyan wrote: "Our measures must proceed with as little disturbance as possible of the ordinary course of private trade, which must ever be the chief resource for the subsistence of the people, but, the people must not, under any circumstances , be allowed to starve.", starve they did, with as little disturbance as possible to private trade.