Bibek Debroy > Quotes

“He (Abhimanyu) picked up a chariot wheel and angrily rushed at Drona. His limbs blazed because of the dust raised by the wheels. He was radiant with the chariot wheel raised high in his arms. In that battle, for a short while, Abhimanyu looked beautiful and seemed to replicate the deeds of Vasudeva.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Mahabharata

“India’s primordial nationalisms—whether expressed in language, religion, caste, or even commensality—would have pulled the country apart, as happened in several other postcolonial states, had it not been for the fact that India consciously gave itself a constitutional order that incorporated
universal franchise and the rule of law; guaranteed individual rights and a federal system that promulgated separation of powers at the center and limits on the central government’s authority over the states; and established recurring elections that tested the strength of contending political parties and endowed them with the privilege of rule for limited periods of time.
By adopting such a framework, India enshrined the twin components that mark all real democracies: contestation, or the peaceful struggle for power through an orderly process that confirms the preferences of the polity, and participation, or the right of all adult citizens, irrespective of wealth, gender, religion, or ethnicity, to vote for a government of their choice.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Deep and liquid markets in a country’s domestic economy are the essential shock absorbers through which the perilous waters of international financial integration can be navigated.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Bhishma, has borne the great burden of the Kouravas, and with him, all that knowledge is about to set. That is the reason I am asking you to approach him.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Mahabharata: Volume 8

“As with the Mahabharata, the Valmiki Ramayana is a smriti text. It has a human origin and composer, it is not a shruti text. Smriti texts are society and context specific.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Valmiki Ramayana Vol. 1

“India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and many others in the post-independence leadership—though, emphatically, not all within this cohort—deeply believed that the combination of liberal democracy, civic nationalism, and socialist economics was essential to successfully building
a modern Indian state.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“India’s success in building a modern state that defied predictions of its demise derived from its thorough insistence on institutionalizing what was Mahatma Gandhi’s greatest bequest to the freedom movement: the construction of a new Indian nation, not by suppressing its many particularities but by incorporating them into a new composite identity that preserved in “marble-cake” fashion all its constituent diversities across ethnic, religious, and racial lines. These diversities, far from being obliterated, acquired salience depending on context but, being enmeshed and free-flowing, they erased the boundaries between the insular and national identities, congealing the latter even as they preserved the former. The modern Indian polity, therefore, emerged not as a nation-state since, given its myriad diversities, it could not be so—but rather as a nations-state. Under the rubric of “unity in diversity,” its different ethnic, religious, and racial groups combined to create a novel, multilayered political identity. However confusing that reality may be to the outside world, it is
authentically and indisputably Indian.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“It is not that education has never been accorded adequate importance in India.
The writings of the founding fathers—including Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Maulana Azad, Ambedkar, and even the spiritual torchbearers of modern India such as Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo—stressed that education would form the core of India’s “tryst with destiny,” as Jawaharlal Nehru would have put it. Almost all of them suggested ways by which a new generation of Indians could be educated in a liberal and scientific environment where modern society was built on traditional strengths, one supplementing but not substituting for the other, and where education was deeply connected to the needs of people. But somehow, independent India could not build on the richness of this philosophical tradition, or on the depth of its populace’s respect for education.
This history seems to have been lost in the current debate, mired in the more mundane issues of access and quality defined in terms of enrollment
numbers and teacher-student ratios.”
― Bibek Debroy

“The affirmation that Indian democracy would be founded entirely on a shared citizenship centered on upholding liberal principles and participatory institutions rather than religion, race, or ethnicity ensured that the many particularities that might have otherwise divided India were in one fell swoop deprived of any fundamental political meaning. This did not imply that the particularities themselves ceased to exist or that they ceased
to provoke contention. Rather, they simply ceased to be privileged attributes that endowed their possessors with either greater rights or natural
claims on power.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Brihadbala was the last Kosala king. In the Kurukshetra War, he fought on the side of the Kouravas and was killed by”
― Bibek Debroy, The Valmiki Ramayana Vol. 1

“in Jain accounts, Ravana is killed by Lakshmana. In Dasharatha Jataka, Sita is Rama’s sister. In Ramayana and Purana accounts, Rama is Vishnu’s seventh avatara.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Valmiki Ramayana Vol. 1

“India’s post-independence leadership eschewed parochial nationalism in favor of civic nationalism where the rights and privileges of being Indian were conceived as arising not from some pre-existent modes of belonging—religion, race, or ethnicity—but instead from participation in a collective political endeavor.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Achieving such deep and liquid markets requires large-scale financial sector reforms, with a complete replacement of the existing regulatory framework.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“For any society, two concerns are paramount—economic growth and
improvement in the well-being of the poor. Growth is needed to finance
redistribution. This redistribution typically takes two forms—productive
investment, for example, the financing of infrastructure, expenditures on
health and education, and simple transfers of income.”
― Bibek Debroy

“He who has not repeatedly heard and studied the Gita, yet desires liberation, will be laughed at by children. But those who hear it and study it are not humans. They are certainly like the gods.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Bhagavad Gita For Millennials

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― Bibek Debroy, The Book Of Limericks

“shruti texts do not have a human agent as a composer. Examples of shruti texts are Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Bhagavad Gita For Millennials

“The adjective, shrimat means splendid or glorious. In other words, the expression means the glorious Bhagavad Gita.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Bhagavad Gita For Millennials

“Dropouts are only one outcome of bad quality. Poor learning outcomes, low employability of graduates, low productivity, and consequent
low wages constitute another set of outcomes.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Vishnu displayed his valour. He kept his feet in three places. It is in those three places that the universe rests. Vishnu's three feet encompass the entire universe.”
― Bibek Debroy, Sama Veda

“Differences
in morbidity, mortality, and nutritional status linked to differences in
socioeconomic status, caste, class, gender, and geography persist in India.”
― Bibek Debroy, Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform

“Hinduism has many major texts, some of the shruti variety and some of the smriti variety.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Bhagavad Gita For Millennials

“There is a being with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes and a thousand feet. He surrounds the earth from all directions, he surrounds the universe from all directions, and yet there is more of him that is left over. This being is divided into four parts. Three of these parts exist in lofty places and the fourth part is manifested on earth. This fourth part embraces the four directions on earth. All beings who have been born and all beings who will be born are manifestations of this being. Three parts of the being are immortal and exist in heaven, and the fourth part sustains all objects on earth. This being is the lord of immortality and of food grains. He is supreme; he is the one who created the earth.”
― Bibek Debroy, Sama Veda