Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Sanjaya Baru - Page 2

Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao put together are no Deng Xiaoping.

Unlike other flagship programmes, which have been left with unpronounceable acronyms, like MGNREGA and JNNURM, Bharat Nirman struck a popular chord.

For too long have many of us in India imagined a future in which the country would rise, leaving the rest of the subcontinent behind. This is neither possible nor warranted.

Battles, on the military and the economic front, are first lost in the minds of the strategists for want of ideas before they are lost on the battleground for want of armoury.

The world may view India more benignly, but it does more business with China. It courts China; it needs China. Look at the genuflecting Europeans and the fork-tongued Americans!

On climate change, Russia's interests are aligned with the West rather than the South.

Just as the policies and programmes for development have to adhere to the law of the land - respecting the basic principles underlying the Constitution - so, too, must the idea of Hindutva.

Public universities are the lifeblood of modern democracies.

Like wildebeest and zebra migration across the Serengeti, investment managers and consultants, too, have a habit of running together and, every now and then, changing direction.

Africa is experiencing rising rates of growth, but will growth get translated into development?

If the World Bank does not alter its shareholding structure to reflect the shifts in global distribution of income and economic power, its role may get marginalised as regional institutions fill the vacuum.

Ups and downs are par for the course and very much a feature of the Indian growth process.

I have been visiting China since 1995.

Unlike China's growth story, which has been built on the strategy of creating excess supply, the Indian growth story has been built on the strategy of responding to incentives generated by excess demand. Which is why a certain degree of inflation is built into the Indian growth process.

There are any number of socially relevant causes that publicly minded individuals may feel strongly about. In a democracy, it is for the government of the day to legislate laws to deal with such issues. Not for courts to issue advisories and declare criminal what may often be normal economic activity protecting livelihoods.

Bharat Nirman was a development programme aimed at stepping up public investment and public-private partnerships in the construction of rural roads, drinking water supply, rural telecommunication, rural housing, and minor irrigation.

If development is defined in social and economic terms while Hindutva is defined in cultural terms, it should be possible for the BJP to construct a political platform that is reassuring to a large majority of Indians and is respectful to the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

It is unfair to constantly allege that Manmohan Singh's only unfulfilled desire is to visit his birthplace in Pakistan and that his Pakistan policy is defined by this obsession.

Few in Europe imagined the incompetence and dishonesty of Greek economic managers would bring the entire European project into question.

While free trade purists have always rejected regional and plurilateral trading arrangements, the WTO's charter chose to be pragmatic and regarded RTAs and FTAs as building blocks of, rather than barriers to, the multilateral trading system.

Angela Merkel is no Konrad Adenauer or Helmut Schmidt.

David Cameron is no Margaret Thatcher.

If U.S. mistakes in the Middle East helped Putin raise Russia's global profile, China's missteps and hubris in East and Southeast Asia, once called Indo-China, have opened up new spaces for India's profile to be raised.

With new oil and gas discoveries, Africa's energy exporters will have to invest in defence capability and work with other Indian Ocean powers to ensure security of sea lanes.

Shoji Ito was an Indophile like no other Japanese economist I have known. During the 1990s, he would frequently visit India to keep pace with the changes in the economy. We would always meet and have long conversations about India, Japan, and the world. Unfortunately, Ito-san died early.

On the upswing of an economic cycle, workers, consumers, savers, investors, and entrepreneurs imagine a future that is brighter than the past. On the downswing, they imagine a future dimmer than the past.

All economically well-off nations have used what has been dubbed 'cheque-book diplomacy,' and China does so, too. Apart from funding government-to-government lending, China has also been able to create global companies and global brands that have contributed to Chinese soft power.

It is inconceivable that the rise of Asia could happen without the rise of the Indian subcontinent.

The Indian voter will not shy away from sacrificing in the national interest. If the voter is convinced that high oil prices are a national challenge and that the government is doing its best to deal with the challenge, the voter would be willing to bear the burden.

Indeed, China may never acquire the geo-political influence and reach that Great Britain enjoyed in the 19th century and the United States of America did in the 20th, even though it may have already surpassed the geo-economic clout the two major powers enjoyed in the heyday of their empires.

Real power in the modern world is determined by a nation's economic capabilities, not just the nuclear warheads it stores.

The role of the media in economic management is not often recognised even by professional economists. Politicians, however, ignore this at their own peril.

Unplanned urbanisation can create urban chaos and trigger urban violence.

Continent-wide nations require continent-wide leaders whenever they are in crisis. The 'idea of Europe,' much like the 'idea of India' was the construction of such continental leaders.

The liberal fiscal spending of the 2004-08 period was made possible both by rising government revenues and national income growth and by relative comfort on the external side. After 2009,these pillars of growth began to wobble. By 2012, they were shaking.

While UPA2's handling of immediate foreign policy challenges can be criticised, it would be difficult to challenge the long-term relevance of the principles that define the Manmohan Singh Doctrine.

India's difficulties in negotiating an FTA with both the ASEAN and E.U. are a reminder of the importance of multilateralism.

There is no denying the fact that China has been able to convert its economic might into commercial and technological capability.

China has, without doubt, become an economic superpower.

On many key global economic issues, Russia's loyalty is divided between the West and the South. As an energy exporter, it stands opposite energy importing China and India. As a commodity trader resisting the influx of cheap Chinese manufactures, its interests in the WTO clash with those of many of the developing economies.