INDIA
DEFENCE CONSULTANTS
WHAT'S HOT?
––
ANALYSIS OF
RECENT HAPPENINGS |
MY VISIONS OF INDIA by
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam
|
New
Delhi, 17 October 2001 This
is a must read for every defence oriented Indian and IDC takes great
pleasure to put it up just when George Fernandes has returned (like Gen
McArthur) to the Defence Ministership. We wish him better luck than
Bhagwat, Kargil and Tehelka. As BBC and TOI editorials have said he is
tainted in public eyes, but then the PM needs him as a missile on his side
and not on the opposite side and is convinced the Jaya Jaitley episode of
taking cash in the RM's House is of no consequence. This
speech by India's leading Defence Scientist indicates the frustration of
an Indian who from the village level rose to be India's Missile man and
never married but dedicated himself to science. We applaud him. However
even he in the DRDO, despite his brilliance, fell prey to the
bureaucratisation of the Projects. The Trishul for the Navy was a
non-starter, as no modern Navy will take a line of sight SAM missile. No
collaborations were attempted and we tried to go it alone from the drawing
board stage and like so many projects, have fallen by the way side. Like
China we did not reverse engineer. The LCA and ATV's are the major
challenges guzzling money. Singapore had offered to collaborate but
insisted it be done partly in Singapore, which we rejected, and he talks
about Singapore too. Recently
DRDO, whose software skills are now vast, had carried out a collaboration
with NPO MASH near Moscow for the Bhramos missile with great success.
Similar collaboration with other agencies can be fruitful. DRDO must vet
all projects and take on those that make sense and go in for collaboration
now that sanctions have been lifted. IDC is willing to assist in the macro
level planning and vetting as a national duty. Over to Abdul Kalam --
Editor. MY
VISIONS OF INDIA By
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam 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 build 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 the 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 incorrect? I
have a third vision. 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 –– the 20 years I spent in ISRO.
I was given the opportunity to be the project director of India's first
satellite launch vehicle, SLV3, the one that launched Rohini. These years
played a very important role in my life as a Scientist. TWO –– after
my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be a part of India's
missile programme. 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,
1998. 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 the 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 callipers weighing over three Kg 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 callipers and took them to the orthopaedic centre. The children
didn't believe their eyes. From dragging around a three kg load on their
legs, they could now move around! These patients’ 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 first in milk production. We are number one in remote
sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are
the second largest producer of rice. 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, 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 orchard 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, 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 was? She replied, “I
want to live in a developed India.” For her, you and I will have to
build this developed India. You must proclaim, India is not an
under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation. Allow
me to come back with vengeance. Got 10 minutes for your country? YOU say
that our government is inefficient. YOU say that our laws are too old. YOU
say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage. YOU say that the
phones don't work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the worst in
the world, mails never reach their destination. YOU say that our country
has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits. YOU say, say and say.
What do YOU do about it? Take
a person on his way to Singapore. Give him a name –– YOURS. Give him a
face –– YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your
International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the
roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground Links as
they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs.60) to drive through Orchard Road
(equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU
comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over
stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall, irrespective of your status
identity. In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU
wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not
dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to
buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs.650)
a month to, "see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to
someone else." YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 kmph) in
Washington and then tell the traffic cop, "Jaanta hai sala main kaun
hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks
and get lost." YOU
wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than in the garbage
pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand. Why don't YOU spit Paan
on the streets of Tokyo? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake
certificates in Boston? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can
respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in
your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment
you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative
citizen in an alien country why cannot YOU be the same here in India. Once
in an interview, the famous ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay Mr
Tinaikar had a point to make. "Rich people's dogs are walked on the
streets to leave their affluent droppings all over the place," he
said. "And then the same people turn around to criticize and blame
the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do they expect
the officers to do? Go down with a broom everytime their dog feels the
pressure in his bowels? In America every dog owner has to clean up after
his pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that
here?" He's right. We
go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all
responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the
government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally
negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to
stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick
a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the
railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the
proper use of bathrooms. We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide
the best of food and toiletries, but we are not going to stop pilfering at
the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff, who are known not
to pass on the service to the public. When
it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl
child and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to
do the reverse at home. Our excuse? "It's the whole system which has
to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a
dowry." So who's going to change the system? What does a system
consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other
households, other cities, other communities and the government. But
definitely not me and YOU. When
it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we
lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into
the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along
and work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand. Or we leave
the country and run away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to
America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York
becomes insecure we run to England. When England experiences unemployment,
we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we
demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody
is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system.
Our conscience is mortgaged to money. Dear Indians, this heart –– pouring from a self-made great Indian is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too....I am echoing J.F.Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians..... "If you want to know what you can do for India; just DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA -- WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY". Lets
do what India needs from us. |