Pratibha Patil

Our goal of poverty eradication and of inclusive growth that embraces the disadvantaged and marginalized sections of society can be achieved when our actions are guided by a social conscience and are not devoid of sensitivity.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

We feel no isolation. But, having said that, I want to emphasise in particular that we do not want to go to extremes and abandon the European and American directions in our foreign economic cooperation.