I sincerely hope that whatever influence the United States has in Pakistan, it will convince Pakistan that using terrorism as an instrument of state policy has no place in the world that we want to build.

I have always regard nonalignment as a statement that India's policies, foreign policy will be guided by what I describe as enlightened national interest. That we will make judgments on an independent basis, with the sole concern being what is enlightened India's national interest. In that sense, nonalignment remains as relevant today as it was in the early 1950s.

India is a functioning democracy despite its extreme poverty, India has stayed the course.

If Pakistan honors in letter and in spirit the commitment that it gave to Mr. Vajpayee in 2004, that Pakistan territory will not be used for promoting terrorist acts against India, the sky is the limit of cooperation between our two countries. Basically, we are the same people. There are ties of religion. There are ties of language. There are ties of culture.

India's saving rate will go up. India's investment rate will go up. And I believe that's a plus point.

Yes, I think India's economy always has been a mixed economy, and by Western standards we are much more of a market economy than a public sector-driven economy.

When I became finance minister in 1991, I discovered that the wealth tax rates income - there was taxation on wealth. It was so atrocious and so high that actually nobody could accumulate money in an honest way. I removed that tax, and the result was that Indian companies for the first time acquired an incentive to grow big, to grow rich.