Globalization is a complex issue, partly because economic globalization is only one part of it. Globalization is greater global closeness, and that is cultural, social, political, as well as economic.
Human development, as an approach, is concerned with what I take to be the basic development idea: namely, advancing the richness of human life, rather than the richness of the economy in which human beings live, which is only a part of it.
Human ordeals thrive on ignorance. To understand a problem with clarity is already half way towards solving it.
I don't think poverty provides that much of an obstacle to education as one thinks. I think the bigger obstacle to education is the fact that it's a very hard thing to do for a first-generation schoolgoer. Because not to have parents at home who can help you, motivate you, is a problem even when the parents are in the abstract very keen on children being educated.
I really do believe that education, despite this massive potential in transforming human lives, has not received the kind of attention that people should have given to it.
If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.
It is important to reclaim for humanity the ground that has been taken from it by various arbitrarily narrow formulations of the demands of rationality.
No substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country with a relatively free press.
Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty, which robs people of the freedom to satisfy hunger; or to achieve sufficient nutrition, or to obtain remedies for treatable illnesses or the opportunity to be adequatley clothed or sheltered, or to enjoy clean water or sanitary facilities.
South Korea at the end of the Second World War had a very low level of literacy. But suddenly, like in Japan, they determined they were going in that direction. In 20 years' time, they had transformed themselves. So when people go on saying that it's all because of perennial culture, which you cannot change, that's not the way the South Korean economy was viewed before the war ended. But again within 30 years, people went on saying there's an ancient culture in Korea that has been pro-education, which is true.
Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.
The Affluent Society not only changed the way the country viewed itself, but gave new phrases to the language: Conventional wisdom, the bland leading the bland, private opulence and public squalor.
The imposing tower of misery which today rests on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education.
There are some people who say that they're concerned only with poverty but not inequality. But I don't think that is a sustainable thought. A lot of poverty is, in fact, inequality because of the connection between income and capability having adequate resources to take part in the life of the community.
There are two principal approaches to secularism, focusing respectively on (1) neutrality between different religions, and (2) prohibition of religious associations in state activities.
Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror.
We might have reason to be driven! We live for a short stretch of time in a world we share with others. Virtually everything we do is dependent on others, from the arts and culture to farmers who grow the food we eat.
We must go on fighting for basic education for all, but also emphasize the importance of the content of education. We have to make sure that sectarian schooling does not convert education into a prison, rather than being a passport to the wide world.
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