Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India.

I have seen vast, perhaps unbelievable, changes during the journey that has brought me from the flicker of a lamp in a small Bengal village to the chandeliers of Delhi.

I come from a political family. My father was a freedom fighter. He was a prominent leader of the locality and member of the Congress party. He spent 10 years in British prisons. In the evening, in our living room, the only subject we used to discuss was politics. So politics was not unfamiliar to me.

We are all equal children before our mother; and India asks each one of us, in whatsoever role we play in the complex drama of nation-building, to do our duty with integrity, commitment and unflinching loyalty to the values enshrined in our Constitution.

As Indians, we must of course learn from the past; but we must remain focused on the future. In my view, education is the true alchemy that can bring India its next golden age.

There is no humiliation more abusive than hunger.

We must recognise that in a globalised world, we cannot remain insulated from external developments. India's trade performance in the current year has been robust, surpassing pre-crisis export levels and pre-crisis export growth trends. We have diversified our export baskets and our export destinations.