Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable - and unethical.

Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.

Development cannot really be so centered only on those in power.

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

If the government is vulnerable to public opinion, then famines are a dreadfully bad thing to have. You can’t win many elections after a famine, and you don’t like being criticized by newspapers, opposition parties in parliament, and so on. Democracy gives the government an immediate political incentive to act.

Education could be a great vehicle for gender equity. It allows people to see what your rights are by reading. Quite often women, for example, may have rights that they are not in the position to actually make use of.

China had managed to reduce their fertility to a large extent because of basic expansion of women's education, not because of the one-child family.