The "Missile Man" of India, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam is heading DRDO and known for his missiles "Agni" & "Prithvi"
. The below speech was delivered by him at some function at hyderabad. I think a must read for every indian.
"I have three visions for
India.
In 3000 years of our
history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our
lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the
Moguls, 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 and 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. 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 worked 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 themto 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 fourth
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 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.
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 old
girl 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 built this
developed India.
You must proclaim.
As an aside from yours
truly: India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation
in an advanced state of decay!!!!"
Do you have anything to
contribute here. YES! then mail me immediately at articles@mkrathi.com
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