If you want to leave move money in the hands of poor people, you cannot do it through personal income tax cuts. You have to just give them money.
We've learned a huge amount from organisations like Seva Mandir and Pratham, for example. In my personal experience, these organisations work on a very large scale with very poor people.
Last year, when we were in Mobile, Al., covering Hurricane Ivan, we heard the stories of poor people, many of them black stranded downtown because they had no way out.
Overall, female scientists have fewer resources than male scientists, just as poor people have less access to health care. But if you compare male and female scientists with identical resources, you find that the women are just as likely to be successful.
Irrespective of economic theories, we will take decisions in the larger interest of the poor people.
Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.
In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.
I hear, 'But why do poor people make such bad decisions?' But actually, their decision-making can be far more complex than that of the better-off in many ways. They're not financially illiterate: they're constantly weighing up choices based on the reality of poverty. Somehow the international development community has resisted accepting this.
All countries have poor people. Yet it's a very rare country which understands the indignities of poverty, while education systems maintain the status quo. The children of the elite go to the best schools and get the best jobs, not because they are the best. We're not taking advantage of the intellectual power on this planet.
The world needs a person like me so that many other rich people will be able to follow my role model. If they do, many poor people will be helped.
