One of the things that any kind of studies bring out is that the mere act of schooling - getting together, the organization involved, going to classes on time, and there're things being taught, sitting down with others with different backgrounds, chatting with them, and, sometimes when there are big barriers, eating together when there are school meals, which are big things together with a big social impact - they themselves have a major effect.

I really do believe that education, despite this massive potential in transforming human lives, has not received the kind of attention that people should have given to it.

Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means.

I think in those countries, including my own in India, where I think primary education has been badly neglected by successive governments, I blame the opposition as much. Why have they allowed the government to get away with it?

Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty

But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.

Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent