Progress in pockets
When A.P.J. Abdul Kalam decided to write about the India of the future in the mid-1990s, he had a 25-year timeframe and the term 20/20—used to describe eyesight—in mind. India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium was published in 1998, during Kalam’s stint as chairman of the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC). It was written with his friend and then TIFAC executive director Y.S. Rajan. The book was well received as no one had earlier attempted to imagine India as a developed country.
Kalam was well positioned to visualise the contours of a developed India. He was the celebrated project director of India’s first satellite launch vehicle project, the chief of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme and chairman of the committee for self-reliance formed in 1993 to reverse the 70:30 import-export ratio of defence equipment. The book focused on five areas—agriculture and food processing, education and health care, information and communication technology, infrastructure development, and self reliance in critical technologies. Later, with Professor P.V. Indiresan, former director, IIT Madras, Kalam expanded the connectivity dimension to rural areas and presented his Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas mission.
After being elected president of India in 2002, Kalam made persistent efforts to buttress the spirit of “developed India”. As co-author of his autobiography Wings of Fire, published in 1999, and member of his speech-writing team, I saw him closely, living and breathing the dream of making India a developed nation.
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