Dr. Kalam devoted a decade of his life pursuing the model
of PURA or Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas.
The nation
remembers its 11th President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in many
forms – missile man, space scientist, nuclearization leader and people's
President. But one common trait which runs through all his roles was his
unflinching optimism and devotion to being productive for the nation. The year 2020 marks a landmark year – it is the milestone of the Vision 2020, which he laid down two decades ago as a pathway to an
economically developed India with societal inclusion.
The cornerstone
of this vision relied on three principal factors – we need to realize and
unleash our potential as a nation, we need to build an economy based on
technological leadership and finally, we need a balanced growth model where
rural and urban can not only co-exist but thrive together.
While we
co-authored Dr. Kalam's final book, Advantage India in 2015,
he told me a story that highlights this aspect of identifying our latent
national potential. In 1975, ISRO needed beryllium
diaphragms for a new device. Today, we can find these diaphragms in
high-quality audio speakers. But few nations had the ability to make them 40 years ago. Dr. Kalam and his scientific team approached a
US-based firm that agreed to sell them to India. Just when the deal was about
to go through, the US government blocked the sale as the material was being
used in their strategic missiles.
Denied a critical
product, India started learning more about it; and discovered something
startling. The US diaphragms were made from beryllium rods produced in Japan -
and the Japanese makers had outsourced the beryllium from us! India was among
the top four producers of this rare element. The team was dismayed to learn
that a product whose raw material we possessed almost exclusively, was denied
to us. A committee of top research labs was then constituted to make our own
beryllium diaphragm. In four months, we triumphed.
In this real-life
run of a story similar to "The Alchemist", the message is clear.
There are many "raw berylliums" hidden in our nation. Often they are
ignored, sometimes even discredited. Dr. Kalam saw this latent potential
foremost in the youth of the nation – whom he believed we need to trust and
invest more. He talked about revamping our education system, via rebuilding
legacy institutions like Nalanda and creating a World Knowledge Platform in
India to transform the nation into a "vishwa guru".
Secondly, we need
to build a spirit of technological nationalism. This is a broader and inclusive
nationalism we need. Technology provides developing economies the ability to
leapfrog certain stages of development. Our mobile phone revolution, for
instance, leapfrogged the landline stage, growing from a million mobile
connections in 1999 to over 760
million smartphones by 2021. India with its market can
also build collaborations across nations based on technological abilities. A
shining example is the BrahMos Cruise Missile co-developed by India and Russia.
While India brought its knowledge in developing the targeting mechanism, Russia
contributed to the propulsion system. It gave both nations the capability to
develop and produce perhaps the best cruise missile system in the world with a
business volume of over $7 billion.
Today, India has
the world-class ability in IT, communication, pharmaceuticals and space - let
us find collaborations for them and unleash true entrepreneurial energy into
them. What do we need to leapfrog here? The stage of environmental degradation
associated with manufacturing. Make in India, Make it Green, and Invent in
India.
There is also a
need to make our spending on research and development more result-oriented. It
concerns me that no Indian citizenship holder has won the Nobel Prize in any of
the sciences, despite India's National Gross Expenditure on Research and
Development (GERD) in science and technology to over Rs 1
lakh crore annually.
The third aspect
is about making the rewards of development reach across rural-urban, across
genders, and across economic groups. One key opportunity which has arisen out
of the current pandemic crisis is our chance to transform our habitation-economy
model. The pain of the exodus of migrant workers must compel us to discover a
new India where there are opportunities for income in villages and smaller
towns – and where the only path to growth is not via the painful process of
migration. Dr. Kalam devoted a decade of his life pursuing the model of PURA or
Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas – where he promoted a model of
connectivities in village clusters to spur economic development and urban class
services of healthcare and education in India's 600,000
villages. The post-pandemic India has a chance to not just go back to older
times, but also to create novel pathways. What road shall we choose?
India has
tremendous potential to innovate and rise to the occasion. In March 2020, at the beginning of COVID-19, India
was reeling in its medical system. Hospitals had no PPEs, markets had no
sanitizers or masks. India was then importing nearly 100%
of its PPEs. It was thought to be the basket case that would collapse under the
pandemic. But not only did India endured through one of the longest lockdowns
across the world it silently revamped its entire medical supply industry.
By June India was
making 200,000 kits a day and by the end of July 2020, India opened up to export PPE and other protective supplies
to the rest of the world. Pune-based Serum India is planning to produce 100 million doses of COVID vaccine as soon as the clinical
trials are positive. But why does it take a crisis and panic to start our
genius innovation? Why cannot our inventive brain apply constantly, under the
motivation to enable a developed India? How do we create this ecosystem of
constant improvement in a time when India is being seen as a global opportunity
to cushion against the Chinese dominance in manufacturing in a post-COVID
world?
One of the firm
thoughts of Dr. Kalam was that forward-looking societies need to be careful
about selecting who their adversaries are. Powerful nations like India will
eventually win over their select opponents. So it is on us today, whether we
choose to contest poverty, illiteracy, or disease – but we designate our own
fellow citizens as our adversaries based on their difference of political
leaning, faith, or region. A nation is as great as the challenger it chooses to
confront.
(Srijan Pal Singh
is the CEO of Kalam Centre. He was the Adviser for Policy and Technology to Dr
APJ Abdul Kalam and co-authored the book Advantage India. Views expressed are
the author's personal.)
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