India Wins Freedom - pg. 164

I came to the conclusion that the Constitution of India must, from the nature of the case, be federal. Further, it must be so framed as to ensure autonomy to the provinces in as many subjects as possible. We had to reconcile the claims of provincial autonomy with national unity. This could be done by finding a satisfactory formular for the distribution of powers and functions between the central and the provincial governments. Some powers and functions would be essentially central, others essentially provincial and some which could be either would be provincially, or centrally exercised by consent. The first step was to devise a formula by which a minimum number of subjects should be declared as essentially the responsibility of the Central Government.