“We live in a country where the government is thinking hard over spending Rs.1 lakh crore to provide sufficient food, but easily spends Rs.5 lakh crore towards tax revision for corporates.”
Binayak Sen, public health specialist and activist on the financial hurdles to Parliament passing the Food Security Bill (India Today, March 5)
“Don’t behave like petulant children, behave like leaders.”
Pranab Mukherjee, Union finance minister, on frequent disruptions to his budget speech in Parliament (March 16)
“Railways was a Jersey cow when I was the minister. Now it has stopped producing milk.”
Lalu Prasad, former railway minister, on the Indian Railways (Times of India, March 16)
“Who wants to be a primary school teacher in India? No one, really…. The salary is so measly that it can only be seen as a supplementary income. It’s no wonder that the majority of aspirants come to it as a last resort.”
Krishna Kumar, former director, NCERT (India Today, March 19)
“The government should not run any school. It is often found that boys from government schools go into naxalism and violence.”
Art of living guru Sri Sri Ravishankar addressing a school function in Jaipur (March 21)
“As Gush-up concentrates wealth on to the tip of a shining pin on which our billionaires pirouette, tidal waves of money crash through the institutions of democracy — the courts, Parliament as well as the media, seriously compromising their ability to function in the ways they are meant to.”
Well-known author Arundhati Roy in ‘Capitalism: A Ghost Story’ (Outlook, March 26)
“Social ascension that led tens of millions of families into the consumer market by creating opportunities for all, has made India and Brazil examples for the world.”
Dilma Rousseff, president of Brazil, in India recently to attend the BRICS summit (Times of India, March 29)
