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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:11:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Three Visions For India' . Dr. A.P.J. Kalaam
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Three Visions For India'
NDA pulls out a political surprise -- the dark horse
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam is finally its consensus candidate
for presidency, leaving Congress and the opposition in
a quandry. Insights into the mind of the man.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
I have three visions for India.
In 3000 years of our history, people from allover the
world have come and invaded us, captured our lands,
conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards. The
Greeks, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the
Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what
was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other
nation. We have not conquered anyone. We have not
grabbed their land, their culture, their history tried
to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we
respect the freedom of others.
That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM.
I believe that India got its first vision of this in
1857, when we started the war of independence. It is
this freedom that we must protect and nurture and
built on. If we are not free, no one will respect us.
My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT.
For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It
is time we see ourselves as a developed nation. We are
among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We
have 10 percent growth rate in most areas. Our
poverty levels are falling, our achievements are being
globally recognized today. Yet we lack the
self-confidence to see ourselves as a developed
nation, self reliant and self assured. Isn't this
right?
I have a third vision. The India must stand up to the
world. Because I believe that unless India stands up
to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength
respects strength. We must be strong not only as a
military power but also as an economic power. Both
must go hand-in-hand.
My good fortune was to have work with three great
minds. Dr Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space,
Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him, and
Dr.Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material. I was
lucky to have worked with all three of them closely
and consider this the great opportunity of my life.
I see four milestones in my career:
ONE: Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the
opportunity to be the project director for India's
first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that
launched Rohini. These years played a very important
role in my life of Scientist.
TWO: After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a
chance to be the part of India's guided missile
program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its
mission requirements in 1994.
THREE: The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this
tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on
May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of
participating with my team in these nuclear tests and
proving to the world that India can make it.That we
are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It
made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we
have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for
which we have developed this new material. A Very
light material called carbon-carbon.
FOUR: One day an orthopaedic surgeon from Nizam
institute of Medical Sciences visited my laboratory.
He lifted the material and found it so light that he
took me to his hospital and showed me his patients.
There were these little girls and boys with heavy
metallic calipers weighing over three Kgs. each,
dragging their feet around. He said to me: Please
remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks, we
made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300 gram calipers
and took them to the orthopaedic center. The children
didn't believe their eyes. From dragging around a
three kg. load on their legs, they could now move
around! Their parents had tears in their eyes. That
was my forth bliss!
Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India
so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our
achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so
many amazing success stories but we refuse to
acknowledge them. Why? We are the second largest
producer of wheat in the world. We are the second
largest producers in rice. We are the first in milk
production. We are number one in Remote sensing
satellites. Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred
the tribal village into a self-sustaining,
self-driving unit. There are millions of such
achievements but our media is only obsessed with the
bad news and failures and disasters. I was in Tel Aviv
once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was
the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and
deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the
front page of the newspaper had the picture of a
Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his
desert land into an orchid and a granary.
It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up
to. The gory details of killings, bombardments,
deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among
other news. In India we only read about death,
sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so negative?
Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed
with foreign things? we want foreign TVs, we want
foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this
obsession with everything imported? Do we not realize
that self-respect comes with self-reliance?
I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year
oldgirl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what
her goal in life is: She replied: "I want to live in a
developed India." For her, you, and I will have to
build this developed India.
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