"Irrespective of whose son or grandson you may be, you can be rejected by the electorate"

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: who invests in IT and other areas.

Coomi Kapoor: Mr Sangma, is there not a conflict of interest between your being IT minister and running a BPO ?

Conrad: When the portfolios were distributed, the IT portfolio was offered to me. I requested the CM to give it to someone else and the CM did that. But after a month the minister in charge of IT got really confused and asked for a switch. Since we see IT as the key sector for our growth, I took on the responsibility. I hope that I don’t allow the conflict of interest to come in the way and I am opening up the industry as much as possible to people outside the region, also.

Dheeraj Nayyar: You all hold charge of economic ministries and there is a view that the next generation of economic reforms has to come from the states. How seriously do you take your roles in terms of economic reforms? Also what is your view on agriculture being exempt from taxation and being given huge subsidies when farmers in Haryana and Punjab are quite rich and do not need those subsidies?

Randeep: In Haryana, the land holding size of nearly 62% of the farmers is below four acres, and about 10 acres is the minimum economically sustainable module for farming. Below that with every acre the yield as also the economic costs of productivity goes up. So our farmers have suffered. I am against taxation on agriculture. As far as economic reforms are concerned and capital investments in the social sectors in Haryana, we have increased spending. For instance, when I took over drinking water and sanitation, my budget was Rs 100 crores. Now it is Rs 632 crores. As for infrastructure, if figures mean anything, between 1966-2005 we built only 17 railway over bridges. We are building 41 in last three years — Rs 500 crores was the building and roads budget when we took over — now it is Rs 1,500 crores.