Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it.

There is considerable evidence that women's education and literacy tend to reduce the mortality rates of children

Development requires major source of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity of repressive states.

I think East Asian countries, I think they're very fortunate to have Buddhism survive as a strong influence because right from the time when Buddha himself, 2,500 years ago, made the point about the importance of education, and the word "Buddha" also means enlighten[ed] or educated. So all the Buddhist countries, not only Japan and Korea and China and Hong Kong and Thailand but also even Burma and Sri Lanka, had a higher level of education.

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.

Thailand's economic development was driven by educational expansion. That has been a very dramatic factor, and South Asia had been pretty miserable in not learning from that experience.

In all kinds of ways there are different freedoms that effect our lives and you can assess what our lives are like by looking at the various freedoms that we have.