•Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. My guest this week is Arun Jaitley. Back on Walk the Talk after almost five years...

Yeah, thank you.

•...In circumstances that are in some ways similar to election time and in some ways different. What’s exercising your mind and anybody’s at this time is a bit more complex, isn’t it?

Well, I think elections take place all the time now. This time it’s an occasion for the general elections, but at any given time in India if it’s not general elections it’s the next Assembly election.

•And each one is called a mini-general election.

No, each one is called a semi-final. And I think in India now, we’ve gotten into the habit of playing a few 100 semi-finals by now. That’s the media phrase.

•Collecting points... it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter, so I think, and the losing semi-finalist may actually win the final. It’s a strange semi-final. But I think barring elections, there are greater concerns at this moment, because elections will keep taking place...

•And governments will change.

Governments will change or not change but the issues are national security and economy and I think for every Indian we can certainly see that things are not very happy on both fronts.

•The economy is a more global issue but national security, the incident in Bombay, has sort of jolted us.

I think what happened pre-Bombay was that national security had become a political issue.

... contd.