Mr. APJ Abdul Kalaam's speech in Hyderabad.

Quote: -

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 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 economipower. 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 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 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! 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 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 in
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
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 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 waalk 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 (88kmph) in Washington and then tell the
traffic cop, "Jaanta hai saala 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 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 every time 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 is 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 he 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 & 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, The article 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.....

"ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE
DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN
COUNTRIES ARE TODAY"

Lets do what India needs from us.