In Delhi the cars are getting bigger and sleeker, the hotels are getting posher, the gates are getting higher, and the guards are no longer the old chowkidars, the watchmen, but they are fellows with guns. And yet the poor are packed into every crevice like lice in the city. People don't see that anymore. It's as if you shine a light very brightly in one place, the darkness deepens around.

Three-quarters of India lives on the edge of the market economy. You can't tell them that only those who can afford water can have it.

As a woman who grew up in a village in India, I've spent my whole life fighting tradition. There's no way that I want to be a traditional Indian housewife.

I'm an activist; I have to be angry all the time. That's what we do!

I stand by what I write and follow through on what I write.

Sometimes the state and the constitution are more enlightened than society.

What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.