As a visitor to the Rashtrapati Bhavan one day, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam happened to glance through the window while chatting with his host. He was spellbound.
There before his eyes was a panoramic view of the Mughal Gardens.
“I wish I could walk on a full moon night in the Mughal Gardens,” he mumbled.
Kalam’s host, then President K.R. Narayanan, was somewhat taken aback. “You are most welcome to come here on a full moon night,” Narayanan had said after a pause.
Kalam did come back — months later. And he stayed for five years, an unconventional and independent-minded President who had moments of uneasiness with both the NDA and the UPA regimes during his tenure from 2002 to 2007.
The former President, whose popularity outlived his stay at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, died on July 27, 2015, doing what he loved best: igniting young minds. He was 83. He was born on October 15, 1931.
Kalam collapsed while delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Shillong on “Liveable Planet Earth” where his targeted audience was made up of 130 second-year students.
Kalam was considered the “People’s President” as he did not come from a political background. In 2002, the political equations were such that neither the ruling BJP-NDA nor the Congress-led opposition had enough votes to get a nominee elected. It was said that Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav toyed with the idea of Kalam as a “consensus” man for Rashtrapati Bhavan. Prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, keen to strengthen his liberal image following the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat earlier that year, seized the opportunity.
The rocket scientist, credited with India’s nuclear bomb and missile programme, has shared his dreams in his book, India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium.
Kalam set India three goals if it had to transform itself from a developing nation into one that is developed. “One, you should be an economically strong nation. Secondly, you should be self reliant in national security and its technologies. Third, you should have a high standing or a high status in the world forum.”
He has relied heavily on Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s works. India, he says, would not achieve the “developed status” without a major and continuing uplift of all Indians “who exist today and the many more millions who would be added in the years to come”.
Vision 2020 has something for everyone. If somebody is a teacher, banker, doctor or a professional, they should devote a few days in a month to do something special, something that would make them feel proud and a poorer or suffering person’s life a little better.
The directive for government officials and people working in PSUs is simple. “Unleash your technological strengths. Transform yourself to service the people in your area.”
The private sector could create projects to uplift small-scale industries and fund research and development for persons who have “fire in them”.
The MNCs are expected to look at a one-billion-plus country as a long-term partner where they can create core competitive technological strength.
According to Kalam, poverty could be completely eliminated by 2020 on the basis of continuous expansion of the domestic market, growing tendency towards self-employment, expansion of the wage economy, modernisation of agriculture, technological upgrade, and integration of research and development. India would lead the world in software, media, financial services, food processing, drugs and pharmaceuticals.
As chairman of the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council, which generated the Technology Vision 2020 documents, Kalam provided guidance to several home-grown technology projects and major technology missions involving sugar and advanced composites and fly ash utilisation.
Kalam says he had been deeply moved by what a 10-year-old had told him when she came up to him to seek his autograph.
“What is your ambition,” Kalam had asked her.
“I want to live in a developed India,” the young student had replied.
In Turning Points, his 2012 sequel to his bestseller, Wings of Fire, Kalam offers a vivid picture of the Rashtrapati Bhavan’s uneasy time with the governments of both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh over the Gujarat riots, the office-of-profit controversy and the imposition of President’s rule in Bihar.
Post retirement, the former President had said that barely a month after moving into the Rashtrapati Bhavan in July 2002, he had virtually overruled the NDA government and visited riot-hit Gujarat.
When he decided to tour Gujarat as his first major task, Kalam says, Vajpayee had asked him: “Do you consider going to Gujarat at this time essential?”
Kalam had told the Prime Minister: “I consider it an important duty so that I can be of some use to remove the pain, and also accelerate the relief activities, and bring about a unity of minds, which is my mission, as I stressed in my address during the swearing-in ceremony.”
Without identifying anyone, Kalam says that many fears were expressed, such as that then chief minister Narendra Modi might boycott his visit. Kalam avoids naming the home ministry, which was under L.K. Advani, but adds: “At the ministry and bureaucratic level, it was suggested that I should not venture into Gujarat at that point of time. One of the main reasons was political.”
Kalam says he was told he would receive a cold reception and that there would be protests from many sides.
“But to my great surprise, when I landed at Gandhinagar, not only the chief minister, but his entire cabinet and a large number of legislators, officials and members of the public were present at the airport. I visited twelve areas — three relief camps and nine riot-hit locations where the losses had been high.”
The book had, however, no adverse comment on Modi. “Narendra Modi, the chief minister, was with me throughout the visit. In one way, this helped me, as wherever I went, I received petitions and complaints and as he was with me I was able to suggest to him that action be taken as quickly as possible,” Kalam writes.
At one relief camp, he recalls, a six-year-old boy walked up to him, held his hands and said: “Rashtrapatiji, I want my mother and father.”
“I was speechless,” Kalam writes. “There itself, I held a quick meeting with the district collector. The chief minister also assured me that the boy’s education and welfare would be taken care of by the government.”
