If you have a rigidly controlled economy, cut off from the rest of the world by infinite protection, nobody has any incentive to increase productivity and to bring new ideas.

My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time.

We should put more money in health. We should put more money in devising credible social safety nets for the poor.

The United States and India can work together.

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

A new India which realizes its destiny in the framework of an open society, in the framework of an open economy, respecting all fundamental human freedoms great respect for pluralistic, inclusive value system. I think that's what unites India and the United States. And I do hope that working together, our two countries can write a new chapter in the history of our relationship.

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.