They said it in August

"Our government has decided to invest in setting up good quality schools across the country. We will support 6,000 new high quality schools — one in every block of the country. Each such school will set standards of excellence for other schools in the area." -- Prime minister Manmohan Singh delivering the Independence Day speech at Delhi’s Red Fort (August 15)

"It is a time for a national focus on pedagogy — on the teaching of critical thinking and imagining — for a national acknowledgment that the humanities and arts are crucial for democracy’s future... Education based mainly on profitability in the global market magni-fies these deficiencies, producing a greedy obtuseness that threatens the very life of democracy." -- Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and philosophy, University of Chicago in Outlook (August 20)

"While a section of the English-speaking youth have benefited from the growth in the IT sector, those coming out of language schools are facing unemployment." -- Sharad Yadav, JD (U) president addressing a party workers’ meeting in Bangalore (August 20)

"According to the Law Commission of India, there are 13 judges for every one million people, far short of the minimum requirement of 60 per million. Compare this with 103 in the US, 75 in Canada and 58 in Australia. If India wants to be a superpower, it must start by reforming that most basic requirement for an efficient society — the judicial system." -- Supreme Court advocate Homi Ranina in Businessworld (August 20)

"There is a huge government-NGO nexus where official funds are transferred to NGOs registered by relatives of ministers and bureaucrats." -- Jeroninio Almeida, founder of iCongo in Businessworld (August 20)

"France is a country that thinks. There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory… Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves." -- Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, proposing a tax cut that would encourage the nation’s people to work harder