If you don't have a functioning financial system the world economy won't be revived. All the major economies have their responsibility to assist at a pace which is required to clean up the balance sheet of the banking system and to ensure that credit flows are resumed.

India happens to be a rich country inhabited by very poor people.

Democracies don't go to war.

I am convinced the entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian people, if allowed to express itself freely in the marketplace, India will be all right.

The salvation of the world ultimately lies in moving towards universal nuclear disarmament, but that's a long distance away.

No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.

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.