Q. We need to create true fiscal and monetary federalism in this country. Do you have any ideas in this direction? Chidambaram: There are one thousand schemes and programmes which are funded by the Centre. It has come as a big revelation. We are now putting in place a Central plan schemes monitoring system to track the money that we spend on these schemes. In the first place, we should not have one thousand schemes. We should converge many of them and hand them over to state governments. Thanks to the last Finance Commission chaired by Dr. Rangarajan, some measure of fiscal discipline has been imposed upon the state governments. Many of them are willing to accept the fiscal discipline. Q. The fundamental problem is that you have 60 per cent of the people dependent on agricultural income, which is 18 per cent of the GDP, and how do you get them into manufacturing? So I was a little concerned when you said that, "Oh! Look we cannot do much about manufacturing because of capital productivity and labour productivity and let's look at mining and services and so forth.' I think you are running away from the fundamental problem. You have to somehow encourage manufacturing, look at redefining your labour laws, see how you can actually make people productive in manufacturing. It seems that the Government has given up the fight or am I wrong? Chidambaram: I did not say we shouldn't encourage manufacturing, all I said was we can't expect manufacturing job growth to correspond to manufacturing growth. Even if manufacturing grows at 10 per cent, jobs in manufacturing will not grow by 10 per cent because of labour productivity and capital productivity and technology. Some jobs will come in manufacturing but you cannot except all the jobs to be created in manufacturing. There is a greater opportunity for more jobs to be created in the services sector, in transportation, in tourism, in retail, in wholesale. We must adopt policies that will encourage manufacturing sector to grow at 10 per cent. We must also encourage sectors which are more job creating. Q. When did you have a sense of a greater calling that you would be involved in politics or did you stumble on it? What triggers that switch in somebody's brain that I am going to lead as opposed to follow? Chidambaram: Madness. I suppose, the moment of madness. They tried to make a capitalist out of me in Harvard University, but they failed. I returned as a socialist. I returned to practice law and work in the trade union movement but over a period of time, I discovered that while socialist objectives are good, its methods are not so good. Q. You have written off loans of farmers and directed banks to not recover the loans. It could lead to a twisted psychology of people believing that the government will waive loans. Chidambaram: Farmers are honest people. Most of them repay their loans year after year. Farming is perhaps the most precarious economic activity in this country. Therefore, we should not look upon debt forgiveness in that manner.