In the eighties, children always used to ask me questions such
as "When can I sing the Song of India?" Today, the youth are asking
me, "What I can give to India?" This shows that the nation is on a
positive growth trajectory. The change in pattern of the questions is
indicative of the transformation which has taken place over the years.
Also, I receive many e-mails and letters asking me "what I can give to
India, my country?"
When I study the letters, messages and mails that I have
received and also the personal interactions with the people, I can
clearly see abundant opportunities in which every citizen can
contribute. I thought of sharing this with you: My topic of this
address will be -- "What can I give to my nation?
In Indian history, our nation has come across a situation, all
at a time, an ascending economic trajectory, continuously rising
foreign exchange reserves, increasing domestic investment with
investors' confidence rising steadily, global successes of Indian
managerial and entrepreneurial talents, global recognition of
technological competence, energy of 540 million youth, umbilical
connectivities of more than 25 million people of Indian origin in
various parts of the planet and the interest shown by many developed
countries to invest in our engineers and scientists through setting up
of new Research and Development Centres in India. The distinction
between the public and the private sectors and the illusory primacy of
one over the other is vanishing. Also, there is a trend that many
young people are opting for creating new enterprises instead of being
mere employees.
Providing leadership for the one billion people with
multi-cultural, multi-language and multi-religious backgrounds is
indeed the core competence of our nation. Our technological competence
and value systems with civilisational heritage are highly respected by
the world community. Also, Foreign Institutional Investors find
investing in India attractive as the returns are high and assured.
Indian industrialists are also investing abroad and opening
new business ventures. Our Gross Domestic Product which stands at U.S.
$ seven hundred and twenty 9 billion is poised to grow at 10 per cent
annually which along with various other concurrent actions, will
enhance the welfare of farmers, workers, professionals and unleash
creativity of entrepreneurs, business persons, scientists, engineers
and all other constituents of society.
Today due to the open sky policy and competitiveness air
travel has become affordable for the growing middle class. The
Railways have introduced many improvements and people can book tickets
through the Internet. The revolution in travel has not only connected
people but also boosted tourism and the economy. Tele-density in the
country has gone up to 18 per cent.
Mobile telephones are reaching the common man and serving
their needs. The one India plan has made calling across the country
easy and affordable. Our ICT sector is exporting more than $24 billion
and the Indian Pharma industry is ranked 4th in the world and exports
nearly $4 billion of products. Our $44 billion automobile industry is
growing at the rate of 17 per cent per annum. Our total exports in the
last 8 months has crossed U.S. $ eighty billion.
Our aerospace and aeronautical achievements are commendable.
Six remote sensing satellites of various resolutions and spectral
bands are providing valuable services in monitoring and management of
natural resources. These have been further complemented with
CARTOSAT-II launched on 10th January 2007 by PSLV-C7 along with the
Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE) and two other foreign
satellites. The SRE after performing micro gravity experiments in
orbit, has since been successfully recovered in Indian waters,
leading to another technological milestone.
Today, we have nine geo-stationary satellites in orbit
including an exclusive EDUSAT for education. The country has
successfully used advances in space technology and telecommunication
towards creating tele-education as well as tele-medicine networks and
village resource centres. SAKSHAT: The One Stop Education Portal has
been launched by the Government to serve the quality education needs
of 11th and 12th class students spread in any part of the country.
Broadband has reached up to the block level in all the Districts.
Students from abroad are coming to India for academic programmes,
training and internship and many foreign institutions have started
collaborating with Indian universities and academic institutions.
India's experience has resulted in providing the Pan African e-Network
connecting 53 countries.
The country has operationalised two strategic missile systems.
A state-of-the-art super sonic cruise missile system has also entered
into commercial production with an international partner.
The number of people living below poverty line has come down
to 22 percent and our literacy rate will soon touch 75 percent. Our
unemployment is around 9 percent of the employable population of 400
million people. The Central Government has launched comprehensive
rural development programmes called Bharat Nirman Programme,
Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission and Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme with substantial outlays for bringing the fruits of development
equitably to all sections of society irrespective of where they
reside. Implementation of PURA programmes has been undertaken by
number of state governments and private institutions in the country
resulting in a number of operational PURAs.
The Central government is planning to introduce two PURA
Clusters in each district across the country as a first phase. People
from all walks of life can be guiding forces and they can be partners
in executing national development programmes and ushering in a good
way of life. The State Governments have also launched a number of
missions including rural and infrastructure development activities
towards realising the goals of Vision 2020.
Against this backdrop, I would like to discuss with you the
ambience in 2020 for which we as a nation have to work.
If we perform in an integrated way with development politics
as the focus, in mission mode with transparency, I visualise even
before the year 2020, that a prosperous India is possible.
We expect the people below the poverty line to come to near
zero and our literacy must be nearly 100 percent. The Human
Development Index of India will be less than 50 against the present
127. Every Indian will have either a good university degree or quality
training with globally competitive employable vocational skills.
E-governance would be in position for all Government to Government
(G2G) and Government to Citizens (G2C) transactions making the
governance system transparent with the National ID card in position.
Tele-density will reach over 75 percent. All our villages will
have reliable, uninterrupted quality electric power supply. The
interlinking of rivers and water bodies and use of technology for
water collection, water recycling and water management will result in
equitable distribution of water for drinking, irrigation, industry,
navigation and as natural beauty.
There will be no shortage of water in any part of the country
nor will there be disasters due to floods, water logging etc. India
would have realised energy security and will be working towards energy
independence. Good sanitation facilities will be available at homes
in every part of India and for all Indians and tourists. We will be
using more of renewable energy such as solar energy, wind power,
bio-mass, mini and micro hydel and thorium based nuclear reactors,
adding less to the pollution.
Through responsive and innovative venture capital systems and
entrepreneurial training both in schools and colleges, we will have
more enterprises leading to a large number of employment generators
rather than employment seekers. A pro-active healthcare system
delivered through innovative schemes will provide quality healthcare
access at an affordable cost to all the people of the country
including those living in remote areas. Everyone will have an
opportunity to take up and complete courses of choice in higher
education.
I am sure you will all see prosperity in the country, which
will replace scarcity and control. In addition to the above economic,
social and human development, India will also have a visible global
presence in strategic sectors and will contribute to world peace. All
our technological and economic advances while enhancing our prosperity
would embed our value system derived from our civilisational heritage.
This unique combination will make our growth robust and sustainable
and will lead to a peaceful, secure, happy and prosperous society.
To achieve these goals, a national movement of development is
essential. In this movement, every citizen, every constituent of our
democracy has to participate. What can be the profile of people's
participation in this development movement? Citizens participation can
be in many important areas like; Reaching the unreached, feedback on
service to the people, Human Resource Development, Entrepreneurship,
Role of Home makers, Environment development, Youth participation in
the political system with a focus on developed India.
The government has doubled credit availability to the
agriculture sector in 2005-06 keeping 2004-05 as a base. NABARD and
banking and financial institutions have to work together to find
hassle-free methods of providing micro credit and micro investment to
needy farmers so that they are weaned away from the clutches of
elements who exploit them.
Simultaneously, agricultural researchers, extension workers
from academic institutions, non-governmental organisations and
industry should work closely with farmers and enable them to increase
productivity, storage, food processing and marketing. In addition,
they should facilitate the farmers to undertake non-farm tasks on the
lines of "one product per village cluster" scheme to promote export of
products based on the core-competence of the village for increasing
the sustainability of the rural sector as a whole. Insurance
companies have to come forward with micro insurance, crop insurance
and cattle insurance, apart from low cost medical insurance for
providing risk cover to farmers. Similarly, units like mobile
diagnostic clinics as in Uttarakhand may be operated in all the
districts to reach medicare to the unreached. Recently, I have come
across a number of initiatives by our judicial systems at various
levels for fast delivery of justice such as legal aid clinics,
mediation and conciliation, mobile court and lok-adalat and increasing
the number of days and number of hours of working per day.
Having mobile courts reaching the village to deliver justice
at the doorstep of rural citizens can reinforce these initiatives. The
corporate sector may also think of reaching the unreached as an
essential component of "Corporate Social Responsibility." In a world
dominated by communication, extending communication from the
privileged to include connectivity to the unreached should be part of
our technological upheaval.
Though India is known to be one of the best destinations for
outsourcing of many of the service and knowledge products, within our
society we are yet to grow to appreciate and pay for the services.
However, developed nations are gauged by the quality of service the
citizens get from the government and from the corporate with which
they do business. One mechanism by which we can continuously increase
the quality of service is through feedback. This should be done by
everyone without fear or bias. This feedback will enable all service
providers to constantly improve the quality of service irrespective of
what the service is. We will see a substantial increase in services
such as electricity, water, telephone, gas, transportation, education,
insurance, banking, legal and police. Service providers whether they
are in Government or in the private sector have to take feedback in
the right spirit and provide customer satisfaction both in the
short-term and in the long-term. Customers should also acknowledge
positive developments and celebrate improvements. This scenario should
lead to pride of service and competitiveness.
Websites and Portals have all along been the best source for
receiving feedback from the public, apart from meeting people
directly. I have been visiting Government websites of many agencies.
If the website does not provide latest information its utility
diminishes and loses the purpose for which the government department
websites were created.
It is necessary that these websites are constantly updated so
that they provide latest information and opportunities for feedback.
The website may also be used to provide information on the action
taken about a particular suggestion. It is essential that service
providing organisations create a user forum and meet them regularly
for proactively improving quality of service through a monitoring
mechanism. Government officers should make use of e-governance
portals and e-mails to stay continuously connected with the people and
take necessary actions. The recent step of the government to introduce
the Right to Information Act is a positive step towards transparency
in governance.
Presently our university education system is contributing 3
million graduates and post graduates every year and students seeking
employment after completion of 10th class and 10+2 class are around 7
million per year. Thus nearly 10 million youth are injected into the
employment market every year. In the 21st century, India needs a large
number of talented youth with higher education for the task of
knowledge acquisition, knowledge imparting, knowledge creation and
knowledge sharing.
At present India has five hundred and forty million youth
under the age of 25. This will continuously be growing till the year
2050. Keeping this resource in mind, the universities and educational
systems should create two cadres of personnel: (i) a global cadre of
skilled youth with specific knowledge of special skills (ii) another
global cadre of youth with higher education. These two cadres will be
required not only for powering the manufacturing and services sector
of India but also will be needed for fulfilling the human resource
requirements of various countries.
Thus, the universities and secondary school education system
will have to work towards increasing the through put of the higher
education system from the existing 11 percent to 20 percent by the
year 2015, 30 percent by the year 2020 and 50 percent by the year
2040.
Other Indians who are not covered by the higher education
system should all have world class skill sets in areas such as
construction, carpentry, electrical systems, repair of mechanical
systems, fashion design, para-legal, para-medical, accountancy, sales
and marketing, software and hardware maintenance and service, software
quality assurance to name a few. No Indian youth should be without
either a world-class higher education or without world class skill
sets.
This is an important task in which all universities, academic
specialists, colleges, vocational training institutions, certification
agencies, banking systems and industrial enterprises can contribute in
terms of assessing correct numbers, designing courses related to
nation building tasks, assessing and providing infrastructural
requirement, improving quality of teachers, ensuring teachers-students
ratio, complementing class room education with virtual class rooms
through tele-education and above all ensuring that students are able
to face international competition in employable skills.
Systems must be designed in such a way that no aspiring
competent student should be denied quality education. The system of
education must be able to maintain the required output quality. These
are examples of what the Government has to do to give an enabling
environment and how those who operate education systems have to give
to our youth. Then, our youth can give their knowledge skills in
making the nation prosperous.
Orientation for entrepreneurship has to start right from the
schools. Teachers need to teach the role of entrepreneurship in
national development in schools. During college education, students
must be exposed to business development opportunities and must be
trained towards creation of new enterprises. Parents should encourage
their children to take up new ventures after their education. We
should cultivate a mind set that "Idea is wealth." The Government must
create a facilitating environment for provision of venture capital for
innovative ideas without collateral security.
Universities, Engineering and Management institutions should
work with banks and other funding agencies towards simplifying
procedures and working with entrepreneurs till the project becomes
self-sustaining and viable. Procedures in Government should facilitate
the spotting and recognition of new Indian talents and small
entrepreneurs by creating a level playing field for healthy
competition. Citizens who can afford could turn themselves into angel
investors or start venture capital organisations to fund such
ventures. Big and small industries need to have a mind to encourage
and partner with young entrepreneurs.
Home makers have an important role to play in addition to
shaping the family. They can equally contribute to societal
upliftment. I have come across a project called "Siruthuli" which has
been taken up in Coimbatore. This project on large scale rain water
harvesting and activating the water bodies, aforestation, sewage and
waste water treatment and solid waste management, integrates a large
number of people from different walks of life. A home maker is
providing the leadership to this project. Many of the Panchayats
across the country have women members who have been giving leadership
in various rural development initiatives. Imagine the difference which
can be made in the six hundred thousand villages with such actions.
Environment can become clean and upgraded only through
countrywide active participation of citizens. People as a team can
participate in cleaning the environment like the cleaning of the Kali
Bein River. Spiritual leaders can play a very important role in
persuading devotees in the clean environment movement which will
promote the evolution of beautiful minds. Local groups can be formed
to demonstrate and teach cleanliness in local residential areas.
Welfare associations, NCC Cadets, Scouts, Guides and NSS Volunteers
can proactively form these groups. Industrialists should follow the
prescribed norms for environmental standards in all their institutions
and make buildings friendly to differently challenged people.
Government employees should keep their offices and their
environment clean as they would like to keep their homes. Parents and
teachers should teach the need for environmental friendly requirements
to younger citizens. Citizens can plant trees and nurture them in
their neighbourhood every year as a mission. Our public
infrastructure, airports, railway stations, bus stations, sea ports
and Hospitals form the face of the nation in the global environment.
It is the responsibility of all stakeholders including citizens to
promote cleanliness in all these public facilities.
The youth should take up politics as their career in large
numbers. Political Science should form part of the curriculum from
secondary to college level for all students with development politics
as the focus. Citizens should proactively cast their votes to select
candidates of known performance with honesty as the focus. Legal
personalities, experts and professionals should educate citizens about
the political process, constitution, procedures and their rights and
responsibilities.
Similarly there are many more important tasks like making
education accessible to every citizen, uplifting citizens below the
poverty level through a focused mission and accelerating agriculture
reforms. In the same way, there can be a movement in the judiciary for
time bound clearance of pending cases in district courts and high
courts within the next 3 years. The Judiciary and bar should ensure
that the common citizen gets speedy justice with nobility. While
citizens demand that our police force has to be transparent and action
oriented, it is also essential that police stations are electronically
connected and simultaneously they should be empowered with better
quality of life, like proper housing, sanitary facilities, medical
cover and children's education. This will enable them to concentrate
in their work with peace of mind and thereby output from the police
would increase. Above all our women folk constitute fifty percent of
our population. Their dignity should be protected and they should get
proper representation in all decision making institutions like
Panchayat systems. Our Panchayat Boards really represent the village
citizens and they should ensure that all development funds allotted
for rural development in their area are properly utilised for the
intended purpose without dilution. Dear friends, there are many more
areas in which citizens can participate towards the national
development movement. Now let me focus on national security.
Our Armed Forces and Paramilitary Forces, day or night, are
awake guarding our borders on the land, in the air and at sea and
remain vigilant to counter any threat and facilitate unhindered
progress of national development. I have experienced this
personally, when I visited the Siachen Glacier at an altitude of 17000
ft. The temperature at minus 35 degrees centigrade with heavy winds,
did not deter our courageous Jawans. When, I was in the submarine, I
saw young sailors and naval officers functioning efficiently and
vigilantly in the silent sea keeping all round vigil on their mission
in the Indian ocean.
When I was with 20 Squadron of the Indian Air Force, I
experienced how our fighter pilots can meet any challenge of
multi-targets through radar missiles and EW systems. We cherish the
valour, commitment and devotion to duty of these gallant personnel
of our Armed Forces. Our Police Forces and Intelligence agencies
complement each other and provide safety and security to our citizens
from unscrupulous elements, criminals and extremists. Many persons
from these forces have laid down their lives while protecting the
nation, the flag and our people. We salute them all. Our colleges and
universities must not only generate excellent entrepreneurs,
researchers but also generate the best soldiers for our country.
Parents should encourage their children to participate in national
security missions.
Some recent incidences of crime against children have shocked
the whole nation and left deep scars in all of us. Children are our
national wealth. Cruelty to children is against the fabric of society
which cannot be tolerated at any cost. Concerted action by all
concerned in society such as watchful neighbours, fast action
oriented police machinery, vigilant media and speedy exemplary
punishment to perpetrators of crime by the judicial system is the
need of the hour. In addition, as a preventive action we have to
identify people who have such tendency in society through modern
psychological test aids. Eradication of cruelty towards children
should be the mission of every Indian since they are our future.
Developed India by 2020 is a mission of a billion people.
Every one of us has a role to play. It will be a reality if everyone
"Gives - What I can give", through individual, societal and nationwide
participation in a national movement facilitated by the Government.
My interactions with our citizens in India and abroad, particularly
the youth demonstrate to me the positive energy flowing from
individuals which make them eager to give all they can to make India
developed. The attitude of giving by every citizen and each group will
definitely be an enriching factor for the whole nation leading to an
accelerated development process.
When the nation marches towards its missions, many challenges
will come on the way. Courage is a very important trait for all
sections of society in overcoming these challenges. I would like to
narrate one incident. On 8th June 2006, I was in the flight of
Su-30-MKI. The captain of the aircraft was Wing Commander Ajay
Rathore. The duration of the flight was 40 minutes. I participated in
all flight actions. When I landed, there were many youth and media
personnel.
One young man asked me a question, "Mr President, please tell
me, since you have flown in the supersonic fighter aircraft at the age
of 74, were you afraid anytime during the flight." I told the young
man, "All the 40 minutes of the flight, I was busy on the controls and
instruments and experiencing the "g" build up. I was advised by the
captain to track targets and also look at the ground using the
synthetic aperture radar. In addition, I was observing the performance
of the instruments developed indigenously. I was continuously busy in
the flight operations and I didn't have time to allow fear to enter
into me." Now, dear young friends who have assembled in front of me
and the nation, I have a message of Courage for you.
Courage to Give
"Courage to think different,
Courage to invent,
Courage to discover the impossible,
Courage to travel into an unexplored path,
Courage to share knowledge
Courage to remove pain
Courage to reach the unreached
Courage to combat problems
And Succeed,
Are the unique qualities of youth."
As the youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage
to achieve success in all my missions.
My dear citizens, let me once again wish you a very purposeful
and happy Republic Day.
May God bless you.
Jai Hind.
