Working together in helping nascent democracies in the task of reconstruction, in the task of development is another area where our two countries [India and the USA] can work together.

We are a coalition government, and that limits our options in some ways. Privatization happens to be one such area.

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.

The first and foremost priority is to finish the unfinished task which the founding fathers of India set out for us at the time of our independence: to get rid of chronic poverty, ignorance, and disease, which have afflicted millions and millions of our people.

India has, of course, aspirations of getting out of its poverty, ignorance, and disease which still afflict millions of people. But I do believe that we have something to offer to the rest of the world, including the United States.

India has remained a full, functioning democracy.

Because the Chinese insistence on one child, I think the proportion of older, non-working age population is going to rise sharply in China.