Jairam Ramesh Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. India needs to be liberated both from the 'high GDP growth hedgehogs' and the 'conservation at all costs hedgehogs.'

Jairam Ramesh

#4. If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt.

Jairam Ramesh

#5. I think toilets are more important than temples. No matter how many temples we go to, we are not going to get salvation. We need to give priority to toilets and cleanliness.

Jairam Ramesh

#6. WTO is not the forum for labour standards. Next, the U.S. will argue the time zone difference is an unfair competitive advantage enjoyed by India that enables our software engineers to work while the Americans sleep.

Jairam Ramesh

#7. Agitation is all about poetry, governance is all about prose.

Jairam Ramesh

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. India has a responsibility to itself to fight Climate Change

Jairam Ramesh

#13. Don't get married in a house where there is no toilet.

Jairam Ramesh