A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

Opponents of globalisation may see it as a new folly, but it is neither particularly new, nor, in general, a folly.

South Korea from a country that had relatively little primary education became close to universal literacy in the course of 25, 30 years, in a way trying to replicate what Japan had done earlier. They were learning to some extent from the Japanese experience too. So I think, in a sense, the East Asians were following a path, which all other countries including South Asia could follow but chose not too.

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

You have to be interested in inequality. The issue of inequality and that of poverty are not separable.

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

Education can really transform the insecurities in the world into a bigger vision of what we are as human beings.