Kalam's 5-pt agenda for India

President A P J Abdul Kalam on Thursday unfolded a five-point integrated plan stressing on agriculture, education and communication technology to make India a developed country by 2020 and called for building confidence among the youth to achieve it.

Elaborating on the integrated action plan, the President said agriculture and food processing, reliable and quality power, surface transport and infrastructure, education and health care, information and communication technology and self reliance in critical technology were areas which should be addressed for speedy development and security of India and making it globally competitive.

Addressing students of the Himachal University during an interaction session at Peterhoff, Kalam said India has a force of 540 million youth below the age of 25 years and every youth must have confidence that "I can do it."

This determination alone could make India a developed country, he asserted.

Stressing the need for population control, Kalam said education of women was key to small family and population growth rate should be brought down to one for thousand.

On foodgrain production, he said the country was surplus in foodgrains with production of 200 million tonnes, but it had to be increased to 400 million tonnes by 2020.

Making a strong plea for interlinking of rivers to divert the water from surplus rivers to deficient rivers, Kalam said it would not only control floods and drought but also provide water for irrigation, drinking and hydro power projects and generate employment for millions of people across the country.

Highlighting the importance of information technology and communication, Kalam said it would go a long way in promoting tele-medicine, tele-education, e-governance and knowledge connectivity and added that it was heartening to note that Indian Space Research Organisation was launching a satellite exclusively for education.

Kalam also said that the GDP growth rate should be increased from six per cent to minimum 10 per cent and sustained for a decade to bring 260 million people living below poverty line, out of poverty.

In order to achieve this, 20 per cent should come from value addition in agriculture, 30 per cent from industry and the remaining 50 per cent from information technology and communication sector, he said adding software and hardware development had wide scope for innovations.

Expressing concern over the addition of 10 million educated youth in the list of unemployed persons, the President called for change in curriculum and syllabus for developing skills for entrepreneurship.

He said employment opportunities would come from agriculture industry and service sector provided we prepare ourselves to stand in global competition.

The President, who answered questions on a large range of subjects, started his address with a couplet stressing the importance of learning.

"Learning gives creativity, creativity leads to thought, thought provides knowledge, knowledge makes you great," he said.

President also assured that next year he would call about 500 college students and 500 school children for a minimum two-hour interaction and also asked them to send him questions through Internet.