'Three Visions For India'

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. Wehave not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history tried to enforce ourway 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 isthis 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 areamong top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas. Our povertylevels are falling, our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence tosee 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 upto the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as amilitary 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 tohave 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 firstsatellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role in mylife 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, onMay 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests andproving to the world that India can make it.That we are no longer a developing nation but one of them. It mademe feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for whichwe 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. Helifted the material and found it so light that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. Therewere these little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three Kgs. each, dragging theirfeet around. He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks, we made these Floorreaction Orthosis 300 gram calipers and took them to the orthopaedic center. The children didn't believe theireyes. From dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around! Their parents had tearsin 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, ourachievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledgethem. Why? We are the second largest producer of wheat in the world. We are the second largest producers inrice. 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 millionsof such achievements but our media is only obsessed with the bad news and failures and disasters. I was in TelAviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments anddeaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewishgentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchid and a granary. It was thisinspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside inthe newspaper, buried among other news. In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why arewe so negative?

Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? we want foreign TVs, we wantforeign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported? Do we not realizethat 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 whather goal in life is: She replied: "I want to live in a developed India." For her, you, and I willhave to build this developed India.

(Excerpted from Wings of Fire by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam)