As an Indian, and now as a politician and a government minister, I’ve become rather concerned about the hype we’re hearing about our own country, all this talk about India becoming a world leader, even the next superpower. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
The notion of ‘world leadership’ is a curiously archaic one. The very phrase is redolent of Kipling ballads and James Bondian adventures. What makes a country a world leader? Is it population, in which case India is on course to top the charts, overtaking China as the world’s most populous country by 2034? Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
The Chinese, as befits a Communist autocracy, approached the task of dominating the Olympics with top-down military discipline. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
The roots of India’s soft power run deep. India’s is a civilization that, over millennia, has offered refuge and, more importantly, religious and cultural freedom, to Jews, Parsis, several varieties of Christians, and Muslims. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama’s stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries? Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
The U.N. guards the vital principles entrenched in its charter, notably the sovereign equality of states and the inadmissibility of interference in their internal affairs. It is precisely because the U.N. is the chief guardian of both these sacrosanct principles that it alone is allowed to approve derogations from them. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
Because so many voters happen to be illiterate, India invented the party symbol, so that voters who could not read the name of their candidate could vote for him or her anyway by recognizing the symbol under which they campaigned. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
Going abroad to study as a teenager, and joining the United Nations at 22, confirmed my ease with the world of the frequent flyer. I saw the average airport terminal as a familiar haven, like a friend’s sitting room. But 9/11 changed all that. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
In China, national priorities are established by the Government and then funded by the state; in India, priorities emerge from seemingly endless discussions and arguments amongst myriad interests, and funds have to be found where they might. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
I’m not a techno-determinist. I believe we need to improve our existing human resources, and technology can only be a complement. Shashi Tharoor Read Quote
