India has been a cauldron of dreams, ideas and aspirations of the humankind and this is a distinctive character of India, and India in that sense represents the world in miniature. If a system can succeed in India, it will indicate the possibility of such success in the world as a whole.

There is a vital force which ultimately brings all the ideas together, and does not allow one idea alone to run away with India. And, that has been demonstrated again and again in terms of conflicting ideologies, conflicting social systems, political systems, all these somehow have been contained in an overall framework ..

The people of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and also of other disadvantaged castes are ... worse-off but they are, better-off also at the same time ...Considerable numbers of people from these classes have moved forward ... It is slow, but steady movement of the lower classes along the scale of the class system ...Something which is almost spectacular in certain sectors today - the assertion of the backward classes, of scheduled castes, of women. ..

We can bring communalism under control. In retrospect, I feel that we could have brought the (Babari Masjid) tragedy also under control. But communal mobilisation in the long run will not succeed in India because Indian society cannot be mobilised communally.Even the last elections have shown that communities, religious communities, castes did noi vote solidly for one party. The Hindu vote, the upper class Hindu vote was divided. The backward class vote was divided. The scheduled castes votes were divided, though there has been some mobilisation on caste and communal basis ...And as time goes on, it will become less and less appealing to the people. This is the trend as I see it. ...

The Nehruvian dream today has become a pungent necessity, inescapable necessity. In 1947 ... it was a dream, it was Gandhi's dream also. But now it has become an inescapable necessity for us to translate that dream into practice. And I think that dream cannot be abandoned. We have to pursue it and pursue it in realistic terms. I see that India can do it. And India must do it.