, who on October 31 completes two years as CM, talks toabout the truce he mediated between film producers and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena over the screening of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil , Maratha protests, and his government’s achievements. Excerpts:When (MNS leader) Raj Thackeray brought up this topic of Rs 5 crore (donation to the Army Welfare Fund ) during the meeting, I told the Film Producers Guild clearly that I am opposed to it and that you don’t need to accept it. We had no issues over the other two conditions (about Pak artistes being banned from future movie projects and showing a slide paying tribute to soldiers before the screening of the film). I told them in front of Raj that the contribution has to be voluntary and upon how much patriotism you feel. I clearly told them that you need not pay this amount. However, the producers themselves were keen on it and said that they wanted to pay.See, the guild wanted me to intervene; it was not my decision to call Raj Thackeray for a meeting. When there was a need for action we did it, we had arrested 12 of their cadres (who barged in to a South Mumbai theatre). However, when there is a possibility of the issue being ended by talks then it should happen, this is the essence of democracy.The Jalyukt Shivar project to conserve water is the biggest project. Our state was in drought for years consecutively. For the first time we have turned this in to a people’s movement. The other major initiative we have taken is that we were always lagging in education — our rank was 13th to 16th as per the Economic Survey . The learning outcome has been dismal as 60% of 5th standard students could not read the books of the third standard. So we have focused on learning outcomes. Today, in 17,000 schools the learning outcome is 100%. 15,000 students from private English medium schools have migrated to government-run schools this year.What we are planning is to bring the agricultural feeders on the solar network. We are making two pilot projects. Earlier we used to give farmers electricity in the morning and in the evening. This electricity was also heavily subidised by charging more from industries. If we convert our agricultural feeders into solar network, we would be able to supply cheaper power to the farmers and also curb transmission losses. The other major initiative that we are going to undertake is to bring in a scheme for sensor-based drip irrigation. We would be approaching sugar factories asking them to take a loan to provide money to sugarcane farmers to install sensorbased drip irrigation as it leads to better yield with less wastage of water. Those factories that don’t participate in this will not be eligible for any of the state schemes.The WB cannot put any conditions on us that the situation doesn’t exist anymore. Now we put the conditions (on them), everybody is coming to give us money. Take the example of the Nagpur-Mumbai Communication Expressway, this would change the future of the state. When it is completed our state would be 20 years ahead of the rest of the country. Twenty-four districts would be integrated with Mumbai. In 10 hours you will be able to reach Mumbai from anywhere. In 16 hours maximum a container would be able to reach JNPT. The petroleum ministry has agreed to lay four pipelines below this road, one will carry gas, one will carry petrol and one will carry petrochemicals. Imagine a stretch of 800 KMs — an entire industrial stretch would come up. The reason the electronics industry has not been able to set up in India is, to sustain, the industry needs gas and with this project this will open up both Mumbai and Nagpur for gasbased industries.We are not monetising land, we will just securitise it, we are just showing our worth, we are going to start a holding company where we will show all our assets and we will get loan accordingly. For instance, for the Nagpur-Mumbai expressway, we have got Rs 34,000 crore from private sector banks and ADB after we told that the land we have is worth Rs 50,000 crore. Similarly, we are also retiring our costly loans. For instance, from the energy department, we had loans taken at 11.5%. We have now brought it down to 8.50%. This will result in annual savings of Rs 800 crore.The kind of protests that the Marathas are taking out is something that we cannot criticise because this is ideal in democracy. By launching a peaceful protest they are piling on pressure on the state and we are acting on it. If there was violence in the morchas, then I don’t think there would be any pressure on us. There are legacy issues but the issue could be resolved, the two communities should not stand against each other but should work together … The Dalits should not think that every other community is coming together to bring down their security. We have to ensure that this feeling should not be allowed to develop. Most of the Maratha community leaders want to resolve the issue. Only a few want to exploit it for political gains.None of the organisers of the morcha is interested (in that). However, there are some among the political parties who are interested in a leadership change through the movement.I said that I won’t be a lame duck CM even for a single day. I won’t sit in the chair for enjoying it, I want to lead the state to progress. You can write it down that I would be the chief minister for the complete five years.We want him to come back.We had formed a committee to look into the issue. The committee found that the agreement with the toll operators was so lopsided and in favour of the contractor that if we cancel the contract, the contractor would benefit immensely. It’s a matter of surprise as to how the contracts were executed by the previous governments. Even the irrigation contracts are the same, hence we cancelled many of the contracts in the Gosikhurd project as the tenders were given at double the normal rates.