There never is a good time for tough decisions. There will always be an election or something else. You have to pick courage and do it. Governance is about taking tough, even unpopular, decisions. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
A country that cannot feed itself cannot have self-pride, and in the mid-’60s 20 percent of all the wheat produced in America came into India. We were agriculturally a basket case. And 15 years later, 20 years later, we have become an agricultural power. This is the famous Green Revolution. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
Elections in India are not contests between personalities. They are ultimately battles involving political parties; promises and pledges that political parties make; the vision and programmes that political parties bring to the table. So although, Modi’s style is ‘I, me, myself,’ I don’t think 2014 elections as a Modi versus Rahul contest. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
Governments can’t keep looking over the shoulder or at the constellation of stars. You have got to do what you have got to do. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
India needs to be liberated both from the ‘high GDP growth hedgehogs’ and the ‘conservation at all costs hedgehogs.’ Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
It was good to launch the economy in the ’50s. Japan did this; China did this; even South Korea did this. All the East Asians did this – import substitution. I think all countries followed import substitution in the ’50s and in the ’60s, but I think by the ’70s, countries were getting out of that first phase of the strategy. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
The Indian diaspora is not a capital-accumulating diaspora. The Indian diaspora is doctors, lawyers, professors. Or newspaper sellers. They are basically trade- or profession-oriented, and so they’re not major investors in their home country. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
The rate of growth of the management skills of any country is inversely proportional to the number of MBAs. Germany produces no MBAs, but America used to produce MBAs by the millions, and you saw the German economy, until at least the ’90s, was certainly more efficient than the American economy. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
I think environmentalists do no service to their cause by taking fundamentalist stances. I am not defending corporate India’s track record, but for many environmental problems, there are technological solutions. Jairam Ramesh Read Quote
