Are you advising the chief minister? He is an old friend of yours.

Everybody is a friend.

You have your trusted aide Jerome Jayakar working with you.

I thought he would be useful to me here. He had done tremendous good work in Bangalore. He headed an organisation which was almost closed. There was a file in front of me when I became chief minister in 1999 where the Bangalore Development Authority, presided over by its chairman, passed a resolution requesting the government to dissolve the BDA as it had become unviable.

I slept over the file for a couple of nights. I looked around for officers who could revive the organisation. I asked Jerome if he was willing to take up the challenge. The role, the assignment, which was more a challenge than an assignment. He said he had two conditions. One condition was that he should have direct access to the chief minister. The second one, that there should be no political interference. I said okay. I agreed to the conditions. I told everyone not to interfere with Jerome's work.

Today, by all assessments it (the BDA) is one of the soundest organisations in the country.

More often than not the bureaucracy is a hindrance.

It depends, bureaucrat to bureaucrat. There are positive thinking, positive acting-focused bureaucrats. There are status quoists. There are totally negative bureaucrats.

Photograph: Arun Patil

Also see: 'We need to acquire greater coherence as a nation'