to any federal government which may be established by common agreement conferring power on that government. No doubt the ruling minority which had acquired control over the Central government vested with substantial powers as were granted to the central government under the Government of India Act 1935, found it in its own interest to protect this position. Indeed their consistent effort was to strengthen the position of the central government even further in the name of national integration. Indeed the Indian Independence act had provided that until the Constituent Assembly framed a Constitution of Pakistan (as also India) the government of India and would operate as a provisional constitution and provide the framework for relations between provinces and the center contributed towards obscuring the fact that the constituent units were in principle sovereign and not provinces enjoying devolved powers handed down by some all powerful center, as historically had been true of British India before 1947.
Point No. 2 Provided for a two subject center or if currency were to be included a three subject center. The antecedents of this demand were there In the Cabinet Mission Plat of 1946, which proposed a three subject centre entrusted only with Defiance Foreign Affairs and Communication. The Grand National Assembly of Democratic Forces a convention of political groups, in opposition to the government, which met in Decca in early 1950 also proposed a federation, called the United States of Pakistan, in which the center would only deal with three subjects Defense foreign Affairs and Communications The United Front which had been formed by the opposition parties to contest the ruling Muslim League in the provincial elections in East Bengal in 1954, had as one of the points on its 21 point manifesto that the constitution should provide for a federation in which the center would only have three subjects: defense, foreign affairs and currency. Thus the second point in the six point formula was a reiteration of a point which had been adopted as one of the basic points relating to the constitution viz. distribution of powers between the centre and the provinces under a federal constitution.
Point No. 3, 4 and 5 were specifically aimed at securing for the region, for the Bengalis, control over their own resources and the powers of managing the economy. The feeling that East Bengal, despite being the powers of managing the economy. The feeling that East Bengal, despite being the majority province was not obtaining a fair deal was widely shared since the earliest days of Pakistan. Initially there was a feeling of being discriminated against in the allocation of federal fund, in the allocation of foreign exchange and in the matter of recruitment to public services by the central government. The conviction grew that Est. Bengal was not getting its due. From the middle of the fifties through the sixties this view was given sharper definition through statistical demonstration of economic disparity in the writings of Bengali economists. These writings had highlighted the discriminatory policies which had resulted in the marked disparity in the economic development of the two wings of Pakistan, the East having been prejudiced by systematic discrimination in favors of the western wing.
The principal instrument through which a substantial transfer of resources from the eastern to the western wing had taken place was perceived to be federal control over economic management. The main thrust of the six point scheme was therefore to regionalize economic management.
