Quotes from Sanjaya Baru

I do believe it is true that the people of India regard the prime minister as the most important political leader.

Hyderabad is a truly pan-Telugu metropolis that has come to accept the mix of Telangana's dakhni culture and the coastal region's Andhra culture.

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.

A common language doesn't soothe dry tongues and thirsty throats.

In India, too many people do not write memoirs, but Natwar Singh and P. C. Alexander did.

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.

If Iran seeks to meddle in domestic Indian politics by creating disaffection among the Shias of Uttar Pradesh, what better way to counter that by reminding all concerned that while the Shias maybe an important vote bank in U.P., they constitute only 10 per cent of Indian Muslims, while the Sunnis account for an overwhelming 90 per cent.

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.

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

As fiscal constraints impinge on defence and diplomacy, governments find themselves increasingly homebound, even if diplomats happily travel to summits.

It would be wrong to see the re-making of Asia, much less India,as a revolt against the West. Asia has indeed been re-built on the ruins of colonialism, but not on the ruins of all that the West has come to represent.

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.

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.

Telangana is not like Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh, nor even like Haryana. Apart from the language it shares with the rest of Andhra Pradesh, it is today more integrated economically into the state as a whole.

To be sure, China is nowhere as powerful as the U.S., but it has acquired the ability to impose its will on individual nations around the world. From Australia to Germany, South Africa to South Korea, political leaders are careful not to rub China the wrong way.

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

The ministries of finance and industries and commerce require modern-minded, transparent, and efficient leadership.

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.

Civil servants and government functionaries do not write memoirs because they hope to get more government jobs or assignments.

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.

When national policy becomes hostage to regional interests, the federal government becomes paralysed and would be unable to act in the larger national interest.

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.

A trilateral initiative by the U.S., China, and India in the Gulf, aimed at facilitating a resolution of historic problems in the region, would benefit global growth and stability.