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.

India is this great experiment of a billion people of such great diverse persuasions working together, seeking their salvation in the framework of a democracy. I believe it will have some lessons for all the multicultural societies.

With the revolution in information technology, with the revolution in transport technologies, I think just geography has lost its all significance.

Nowhere else you will find a country of India's diversity, of India's complexity, one billion people trying to seek their social and economic salvation in the framework of democracy, in the framework of an open economy.

Terrorists had the advantage of surprise.

I look upon India-U.S. nuclear cooperation as an act of historic reconciliation.

I sincerely believe what happens in India has, I think, lessons, morals for the future evolution of humankind in the 21st century.