“The MDGs were meant to create a social safety net; the SDGs to be fit for an age in which the standard of living in a big chunk of the developing world is creeping towards the levels of rich countries.”
The Economist on the unveiling of the Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations, New York on September 25 (September 19-25)
“The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity.”
Viola Davis, first black woman to win an Emmy award for best actress in her acceptance speech (September 21)
“The state accounts for one percent of the total bank credit in India; that’s only marginally more than the credit that banks give in Chandigarh, which has all of 1 million people (Bihar in 2011 had 104 million).”
T.N. Ninan in an essay ‘Surviving in Bihar’ (Business Standard, September 26)
“I would hang down my head and weep if I were Irani and presiding over one of the world’s worst education systems.”
Gurcharan Das, well-known author, on what Union HRD minister Smriti Irani needs to do to fix India’s education system (Times of India, September 27)
“A back-to-back drought is uncommon having occurred only four times in a hundred years with the last being in 1986-87. But nearly three decades later, the country is still haunted by a spate of farmer suicides.”
Amarnath K. Menon, journalist, on the unabated farmer suicides epidemic (India Today, September 28)
“The prime minister should realise that men like Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are making their fortunes in the US because they are more committed to their own careers than to India. The patriotism of NRIs has always struck me as slightly phoney.”
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, senior journalist and columnist, on the recent US visit of prime minister Narendra Modi (Deccan Chronicle, September 29)