The director of the institute where I was working apologized about these young, enthusiastic researchers when the World Bank visited because he was afraid the institute would lose the World Bank consultancies.I went back home and started the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology—an extremely elaborate name for the tiny institute that I started in my mother’s cow shed. My parents handed over family resources and said, “Put them to public purpose.” That’s how I survived.

The agrarian crisis [in India] is an unnecessary tragedy, resulting directly from an economics of greed and a politics driven by the economies of greed.

Today the environmental movement has become opposed to issues of justice. You can see this in the way issues are framed. It's a permanent replay of jobs-versus-the-environment, in nature-versus-bread. These are extremely artificial dichotomies.

I absolutely get thrills from taking on these big guys and recognizing how, behind all their power, they are so empty. I just keep going at it. Each of these balloons does deflate. I’ve seen a lot of balloons get deflated in my life.

Because of these new car models there is suddenly on the streets of Delhi a new intolerance by the motorists for both the cows and the cyclists. So for the first time the sacred cow in India, which used to be such a wonderful speed-breaker, is now seen as a nuisance. For the first time, I’ve seen cows being hit and hurt. These guys just go right past, and if the cow is sitting on the road, they don’t care. We can’t afford to have a sacred car rather than a sacred cow.

We will either defend the rights of people and the earth, and for that we have to dismantle the rights that corporations have assigned to themselves, or corporations will in the next three decades destroy this planet, in terms of human possibilities.

The fact that I still find so much beauty in a handicraft is because my mother taught us to see not just the craft as a product but the craft as an embodiment of human creativity and human labor.