'Triple talaq and polygamy are likely to be the next ground on which Hindutva will assert itself.' 'And, as with other issues where this has happened, we must anticipate trouble.'

'Will this surgical strike of ours put an end to Pakistani terror?' 'And if not, what will we do when the next terror strike happens?' 'Will there be another surgical strike or will we have to do something bigger?' 'How big does it have to be to get Pakistan to totally stop?'

Very few people have access to the granular detail of what options are available to India and what their costs, consequences and benefits are. While Modi considers all of this, he would do well to do one thing. And that is to ignore the media.

'Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan now act in only about one film each year, and made money through advertisements and television.' 'This meant that many people, even if they had the money to spend on a movie and wanted to go, often had nothing available for them to watch.'

'The media, particularly the national media and especially the English media, do not report these stories any longer.' 'They have no interest in crime or human interest stories that do not concern the wealthy,' says Aakar Patel.

It is a difficult question to answer. This problem will remain with us for a very long time because we are the only major nation whose elite speaks a language that is a foreign tongue, says Aakar Patel.

The more one thinks about it, the more difficult it is to see how India will be able to reap the benefits of a demographic dividend, says Aakar Patel.

'To love all Indians is to love India in reality.' 'To love the lines on a map is to love a symbol,' says Aakar Patel.

'It is not the external world that is stopping Indians from winning medals. It is our culture.'

''We have a very difficult period ahead of us.' 'Fortunately we have a popular government and a popular leader who is ideally placed to take us into confidence,' says Aakar Patel.

'This influence of anchors like Arnab Goswami is mostly negative because their focus is on issues that concern upper class anxieties.' 'Those that affect the majority of people, hundreds of millions of Indians, like health, primary education and nutrition, are not discussed,' says Aakar Patel.

'They have earned their money and their fame. They could have earned our respect by behaving in more public spirited fashion, but they have chosen instead to be unconcerned on that count,' says Aakar Patel.

'The Indian middle class ignores the conflicts areas in Jammu and Kashmir, in Central India and in the North East.' 'The violence does not touch us at all and so we are able to easily look away from the underlying reasons and grievances.'

'He selects certain portfolios that he has personal interest in, and he does not give them to a senior leader. The responsibility is given to a junior minister who then directly reports to Modi or to the small team of bureaucrats working with Modi.' 'I noticed this first in Gujarat where Modi worked mainly with two ministers, Saurabh Patel and Amit Shah,' says Aakar Patel.

'For such prices you could get a place inside New York City and inside London.' 'Rs 7 crore is a million dollars and will bring you a handsome place in any city in the world.' 'The truly strange thing is that the conversion of the rupee's actual value makes India's real estate even more expensive,' says Aakar Patel.

'The project of a united Europe has constantly been made and remade.' 'The national borders have changed many, many times and so have the languages.' 'Britain's exit is only the latest episode in this long history,' says Aakar Patel.

'Gujaratis, among all Indians, are supposed to be born businessmen, but if more than 80% of them do not have the ability to do basic arithmetic, the future is grim.' 'The big issues are in society and they cannot be changed by an HRD minister no matter how brilliant she may be or think of herself as being,' says Aakar Patel.

'China's development is on a different scale from India's. They are very far ahead.' 'I don't think it will be possible in the next 30 years for us to catch them,' says Aakar Patel.

'It seems to me that bringing Rahul in now would be like throwing petrol on the flames consuming Congress,' says Aakar Patel.

'Rich Indians don't give cash, they give gold. Why?' 'Because cash is spent by temples on prasad or doing some charitable work.' 'Gold remains intact with god,' says Aakar Patel.