At a press conference for Art of Living's water conservation project in Latur on April 30, 2016, a journalist asked Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, "Are you doing all this work for the Nobel Prize?" He replied, "Not at all. What will I do with a prize? We have been doing social work for years now and it has not been for prizes. When good work is done, people think it is for a prize. There is no logic in this.
“When a 16-year-old girl, without any body of work, gets the prize, you get a sense that you don’t need to do much to get the Peace Prize. There are political factors at play."
He added that once someone had told him you have to lobby for the prize. Gurudev refused, saying "I will not do so."
This has been misquoted by the media.