They said it in October

"Higher education was always the sick child of education, either by design or default." -- Union HRD minister Arjun Singh at a UGC conference in Delhi (October 10)

"Examine the balance sheets of the top 100 companies, save for the Tatas, and you will be flabbergasted at how little corporate India gives. What is even more galling is that companies like Microsoft and Citibank are doing more for India than most home-grown corporations." - Suhel Seth, columnist and author in Times of India (October 22)

"Benazir may speak the language of liberalism and look good on Larry King’s sofa, but both her terms in office were marked by incompetence, extra-judicial killings and brazen looting of the treasury. Benazir may look the part, but she’s as ruthless and conniving as they come — a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf. " -- Jemima Khan on Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan in the Sunday Telegraph (October 24)

"It took minutes for the top guns to swing into action when the Sensex fell by several hundred points. But no minister came forward when India hit the 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index — behind Ethiopia." -- Development journalist P. Sainath in The Hindu (October 26)

"I am a politician by accident. I did not choose politics as a career." -- Prime minister Manmohan Singh

"It would be nice to have a woman President. I think half the Senate should be women, half of Parliament, half the ruling Mullahs. But that will never happen, darling." -- Meryl Streep, Oscar winning actress, on Hillary Clinton’s run for the US presidency

"There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilisation." -- Abdallal S. Jumah, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s oil giant, in The Hindu (October 27)