Hi all,
Read this
suri^^vizag
Hi friends,
Mr. APJ Abdul Kalaam's recent speech in Hyderabad. An Indian must
read.
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
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 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.
As an Indian Please pass on this info to as many as possible. Be
Proud to
be an Indian
-- fileof, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 04/04/2001
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