Excerpts of the interview:

Despite tall claims, Haryana projects an image of lop-sided development. On one end of the spectrum, you have a swanky city like Gurgaon, while basic civic facilities still elude a majority of the people. What's the position now?
I think it is incorrect to have such an image. We have taken bold measures to usher in all-round development in the state. Yes, Gurgaon is a model city and we have successfully created state-of-the-art infrastructure there. But it's not an isolated case. We are developing Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Sonepat, Nanocity in Panchkula, Medicity in Gurgaon and many other theme cities are being planned by the government. That said, we have executed plans for every town and village. For instance, we have invested heavily into construction of expressways and roads for smooth internal and external connectivity.

Besides, every village has power supply, a primary school, healthcare facilities and others, which have been scaled up as per population and geographical requirements. For ensuring a balanced growth, apart from Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), we have introduced Haryana Rural Development Authority (HRDA) which looks into development aspects of rural parts of the state.

What's the reason behind the dismal power supply scenario in the state?
For me, power is the wheel of development. When I took over in March 2005, the total power generation was just 1,587 MW and the total availability was 4,031 MW. In view of the fact that the power demand has been growing by 10% per annum, we are now faced with a demand of 6,000-7,000 MW, most of which we have to buy from other states at a price as high as Rs 9 per unit. We have taken a decision to generate 5,000 MW in a time-bound manner and we expect to generate 8,000 MW by 2011. That will take care of all future requirements.

Agriculture is the predominant activity in Haryana. How have you addressed the issues in the sector?
Our government has been sensitive to the needs of agriculture and it's because of our proactive measures that we already are no. 1 in the country in wheat, milk and fishery production. We have many unique programmes for farmers and the increase in farm output is reflective of our commitment to take it to newer highs.

Haryana has been quite active in developing a unique labour policy and lay stress on employment generation. Please elaborate.
Yes, we are the first state to develop a labour policy and fix the minimum wage at Rs 310 per day. We are also the first state government to announce pay hikes for all government employees just after the Central Pay Commission recommendations were announced. As for employment generation, we are clear that apart from rapid industrialisation, we need to make our people employable. When I took over, there were only 23,000 seats available in different engineering, polytechnic institutes and others. We have scaled up the availability to 80,000 seats now and plan to hike technical education seats to 1 lakh by 2010. We believe if we have more skilled workers, the problem of unemployment will be easy to solve.

What about industrial climate, particularly after some unpleasant incidents that some states have witnessed in recent times?
Owing to our unique geographical location, we have been promoting an investment-friendly environment with many measures for industries. Ever since we announced our New Industrial Policy in 2005, we have attracted investments worth Rs 60,000 cr and have another Rs 80,000 cr in the pipeline. We hope to get investments worth Rs 2 lakh cr which would provide employment to 10 lakh people. And this excluding the employment opportunities in SEZs.