Famines occur under a colonial administration, like the British Raj in India or for that matter in Ireland, or under military dictators in one country after another, like Somalia and Ethiopia, or in one-party states like the Soviet Union and China.

[The] USA has been immensely successful in making the determination to deal with terrorism [as] a factor in the global world and, similarly, if it took a similar interest in education, it could make a difference.

The governments and the hard-headed military establishment and the general conservative part of America have never taken much interest in democracy, anyway.

In India, [in] the great documents like [the] Upanishads in eighth century B.C., you find some of the wisest [women] making great, learned speeches and then you worship them, but actually don't do very much about girls' education generally. So I think there has been a kind of dual presence of pain, respect, and saying you are great, etc., but not providing the basic facilities that make women able to lead the kind of life that they would like to and that men easily do.

There's no reason why one need not look at the content of education just as one is expanding the availability of school, because it doesn't cost more money to get them [a] better education. It requires better textbooks, it requires a vision, it requires a determination, but it's not very expensive to do that anyway.

When the government is trying to penny-pinch and, at the same time, trying to keep a defense expenditure and so forth, which are regarded as quote unquote essential, the education is regarded inessential.

You can’t prevent undernourishment so easily, but famines you can stop with half an effort. Then the question was why don’t the governments stop them?