India is content with itself, and driven by the will to sit on the high table of prosperity. It will not be deflected in its mission by noxious practitioners of terror.

I personally believe that the office of the President of India is not to be sought. It is to be offered.

In our generation, the role models were Gandhi and Nehru. We revered them. They were venerated personalities. I read almost every speech of Nehru.

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.

Of course, running a coalition government in a country like India is a difficult task. More so when Congress leads the coalition, since most of the political parties were anti-Congress. To have a coalition, to run a coalition government, you require a lot of adjustments, a lot of flexibility.

I feel that when the reforms in UN take place and the Security Council will be expanded in the permanent membership category, India will have a place, I hope so, but first it is to be expanded.