The ending of colonialism does not in itself result in social and economic progress: it provides the opportunities for it. - Lee Kuan Yew

Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they're educated and they're properly brought up, then you don't have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It's like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it's got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts.

The American culture...is that we start from scratch and beat you. That is why I have confidence that the American economy will recover. They were going down against Japan and Germany in manufacturing. But they came up with the Internet, Microsoft and Bill Gates, and Dell...What kind of mindset do you need for that? It is part of their history. They went into an empty continent and made the best of it—killed the Red Indians and took over the land and the buffaloes. So this is how they ended up—you build a town here, you be the sheriff, I am the judge, you are the policeman, and you are the banker, let us start. And this culture has carried on until today. There is the belief that you can make it happen.

India is an intrinsic part of this unfolding new world order. India can no longer be dismissed as a “wounded civilisation”, in the hurtful phrase of a westernised non resident Indian author (V.S. Naipaul).