Quotes & Sayings About Poverty In India

The trouble is Indians aren't used to being prosperous. We are more comfortable dealing with poverty- after all, poverty has been the staple here, and has been for many centuries. — Shobhaa De

When you have no choice, you have no discontent either. — Vivek Shanbhag

We plunge ourselves into enormous debt and then take two and three jobs to stay afloat. We uproot our families with unnecessary moves just so we can have a more prestigious house. We grasp and grab and never have enough. And most destructive of all, our flashy cars and sports spectaculars and backyard pools have a way of crowding out much interest in civil rights or inner city poverty or the starved masses of India. Greed has a way of severing the cords of compassion. Richard J. Foster, 1981 — Catherine Whitmire

Learning about Poverty'. 'Two young American Jesuits showed up at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. Father Arrupe asked what assignment had brought them there. They explained that they were on their way to India to work with the poor, as part of their training. Afterward Arrupe said to an assistant, 'it certainly costs us a lot of money to teach our men about poverty'. — James Martin

People see poverty all around them in India, but they are desensitized or immune to it. I came to the conclusion that poverty is driven by lack of education. — Mohnish Pabrai

It was easier to deal with poverty and death in India that the lack of spirituality in America. — Mother Teresa

A decade ago, critics suggested biotech crops would not be valuable in the developing world. Now 90 percent of farmers who benefit are resource-poor farmers in developing countries. These helped alleviate 7.7 million subsistence farmers in China, India, South Africa, the Philippines from abject poverty. — Clive James

There's much talk about how there can't be democracy in a region that has problems of illiteracy and poverty. But I bring a different idea to the table when I say, 'Guys, I come from India. I'm more optimistic coming from where I'm coming.' — Bobby Ghosh

So spoke the man whose importance originated in the golden harvest he had reaped with the resistless hand of force, from the the legal, but unfortunate possessors, in a far distant region, where the conviction of riches proves certain destruction to the hapless natives, and poverty is considered as the greatest crime their European plunderers can possibly be accused of. — Helen Craik

First, I was so dazzled and besotted by India. People said the poverty was biblical, and I'm afraid that was my attitude, too. It's terribly easy to get used to someone else's poverty if you're living a middle-class life in it. But after a while, I saw it wasn't possible to accept it, and I also didn't want to. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

No doubt we instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a child drown; many can ignore the avoidable deaths of children in Africa or India. The question, however, is not what we usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to see any sound moral justification for the view that distance, or community membership, makes a crucial difference to our obligations. — Peter Singer

Then I told him, 'Injustice, Poverty and Discrimination is faced by a lot of Indians, and also majority, the fact is that if you "Minority" stop thinking yourself as a part of "Minority" and start thinking as the part of India, and proceed together for it's good, then only "Minority" and majority would progress altogether. — Shaikh Ashraf

Our task today is to bring India to the threshold of the twenty-first century, free of burden of poverty, legacy of our colonial past, and capable of meeting the rising aspirations of our people. — Rajiv Gandhi

Honesty is not a virtue, it is a luxury. Most, who struggle to put bread on the table, face this question every day. And hunger wins this game almost every time, beta (son). — Prashant Chopra

India made a big mistake by signing up to TRIPS. With a population of 1.3 billion, India can't afford a monopoly in healthcare. Monopolies lead to higher prices and we can't allow them in a country like India with so much poverty and misery. It was like signing our own death warrant. — Yusuf Hamied

We must begin by acknowledging that there is a complete absence of two things in Indian Society. One of these is equality. On the social plane we have an India based on the principles of graded inequality, which means elevation for some and degradation for others. On the economic plane we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. — B.R. Ambedkar

The spinning wheel and the spinning wheel alone will solve, if anything will solve, the problem of the deepening poverty of India. — Mahatma Gandhi

The ancient paused for a moment, as if his strength were failing. Yet I sensed that there was more to tell. Looking deep into my eyes, he whispered:
'The Gond kingdoms have fallen, their people live dispersed in poverty: the teak trees and the jungles have been cleared ... but the importance of the Gonds must not be forgotten! — Tahir Shah

The poverty of the West is far more difficult to solve than the poverty of India. — Mother Teresa

There are large numbers of people in India below the poverty line, there are large numbers of people who lead a meager existence. They want to find a little escape from the hardships of life, and come and watch something colorful and exciting and musical. Indian cinema provides that. So yes, the content of our television and our cinema is escapist in nature because we are there to provide entertainment. — Amitabh Bachchan

My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time. — Manmohan Singh

Before I was married, I thought the sound of bangles jangling on my forearms would be delightful. I looked forward to being able to wear bells around my ankles and silver necklaces around my neck, but not any more, not since I had learned what they represented for the man who gave them. A necklace was no prettier than a piece of of rope that ties a goat to a tree, depriving it of freedom. — Phoolan Devi

India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization that sparkles not only in our magnificent art, but also in the enormous creativity and humanity of our daily life in city and village. — Pranab Mukherjee

The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever. Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still smiles. The mystery of India, say Indologists. — Gunter Grass

Padma shook her head and sighed loudly. Her friend was foolish to think evil would simply disappear and leave them alone. "There is talk of a syndicate rising up. They are not happy with what you have set up here." "Of course they're not. But that's just too bad." Charlie sat across from her and frowned. "Before I was abducted, I was aware of poverty in the general sense, but the personal stories of bondage are so real and so heart wrenching." "Charlie, please, you need to focus on the matter at hand," Padma urged. "But don't you see, it's all connected. More than thirty million people are in some form of slavery worldwide. Thirty million!" Drumming her fingers on the desk, Charlie gave a weak smile. "I cannot stand by and do nothing. India has my heart and sadly it is one of the worst countries for human trafficking. You and I can attest to that. — Tracey Hoffmann

Places like India can give you a real culture shock because of the poverty you see, and it brings you up sharply. — Terry Wogan

Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India. — Pranab Mukherjee

Hundreds of millions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty with the creation of robust middle classes in India and China, which is an enormously positive development for those countries that also creates opportunities for the rest of the world. — Dan Quayle

I looked at the people, then, and I saw how busy they were - how much industry and energy described their lives. — Gregory David Roberts

My father was a civil servant in northern India where I was born. As a boy I saw the dire effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially on women and children. It often seemed that the only thing separating me from them was luck. — Naveen Jain

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty. — Vijay Mallya

Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like the one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep
all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. — Aravind Adiga

Spending time in Calcutta [India] really did a number on me. The way life and death are almost the same thing, the way poverty is dealt with, the sheer number of dead bodies you see, it's all pretty overwhelming. — Henry Rollins

Their thought is India is a beehive (Madhumakhi Ka Chhata) but our thought is India is our Mother (Maata). Their thought is poverty is a state of mind, our thought is that the poor are manifestation of Almighty. Their thought is to divide and rule, our thought is to integrate and do development. Their soch is Vanshvaad, our soch is Rashtravaad. They say Rajneeti is everything, we say Rashtraneeti is everything. Your thought is to save the chair, our thought is to save the nation. — Narendra Modi

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Tourism in India has the potential to promote faster, sustainable and more inclusive growth. It could be used as a powerful antidote to tackle poverty. — Chiranjeevi

Becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens. — Katherine Boo

There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa. — Hans Rosling

The government belongs to the poor people of the country. We are custodian of people's hope. For whom should the government be? For educated people or few others. Government should be for the poor. If rich want to educate their children, they can send anywhere. If rich fall ill, hundreds of doctors are at service. So the foremost responsibility of the government should be to listen to the poor and work for them. If we do not work for the poor, the people will never pardon us. — Narendra Modi

If overpopulation or lack of resources created poverty, then Hong Kong should be poor. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per square mile as India, and no valuable natural resources. Yet Hong Kong is rich; the average income there is higher than in Great Britain or Canada. This is a recent development. In the 1920s, Hong Kong was as poor as India. But in a relatively short time it became rich because of one key ingredient: economic freedom. — John Stossel

The Obama administration has a strange theory. Terrorism is a response of uneducated human beings who have been disenfranchised politically and economically. If we can solve the 'root grievances' of the poor and oppressed around the world, there will be no more terrorists, and Americans will be safe. This view is of course absurd. If poverty, lack of education, and political disenfranchisement were the causes of terrorism, then much of India and most of China would be populated by terrorists. But they are not. And this is because terrorism is the violent expression of ideology, not objective conditions - what has famously been called 'propaganda of the deed.' The terrorist's ideology may be secular and political - communist or fascist, for example - or it may be religious - Christian, Islamic, or even Hindu. — Sebastian Gorka

I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it. — Tahir Shah

The first issue that compelled me was a very strange split between India being highly development scientifically (we were the third biggest scientific manpower in the world then) and yet at the same time struggling with amazing poverty. The linear equation that says that modern science equals progress and the reduction of poverty did not apply to India. It wasn't working. — Vandana Shiva

India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

This is indeed India!
... . The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday's bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined. — Mark Twain

On election days, the burdens of poverty and corruption and of a creaky economic system are put aside, and India celebrates. Many voters dress especially for the occasion ... None quite voice the thought, but those who came in a steady stream to vote seemed to be saying that India may have fallen far behind its neighbors in the struggle for prosperity, but as long as it can choose its governments, it can hope for better in the future. — Shashi Tharoor

The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central - but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India. — Beeban Kidron

It's great to see countries like China and India lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by essentially copying Western ways of doing things. — Niall Ferguson

If farmers become weak the country loses self-reliance but if they are strong, freedom also becomes strong. If we do not maintain our progress in agriculture, poverty cannot be eliminated from India.But our biggest poverty alleviation programme is to improve the living standard of our farmers. The thrust of our poverty alleviation programmes is on the uplift of the farmers. — Rajiv Gandhi