As a “medium-term” measure, he said “we must evolve a more effective strategy to increase production of food-grains, vegetable oils, pulses and this will be a priority concern during the Eleventh Plan”.

From fixing SEZ to minority plans

Farms alone can’t sustain

• Average size of landholding is small, limitations to what you can do to improve agricultural productivity. The long-term solution has to be to take people away from agriculture, to manufacturing, to services, other non-agricultural pursuits

My friend Buddha right

• Do sincerely believe that my friend Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is right when he says time has come to work steadfastly to rapidly industrialise economy... We need to encourage labour-intensive industries

If error in SEZ, will correct

• Does not mean that everything that is being done is sacrosanct. Pranab Mukherjee is heading a GoM to review the approach to SEZ to find out if there are any pitfalls in the present policy... If we have made a particular mistake... we will make necessary corrections

No leaving out minorities

• I make no apology for identifying minority concentrated districts... to ensure that the minorities do not get left behind and they too get the benefit of the growth process