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Kalam masses' favourite at felicitation of Top-3

Saisuresh Sivaswamy, P Rajendran in Bombay

"The first vision for India was unveiled in 1857, when the nation rose against foreign domination. This was a process that culminated in freedom 90 years later. Today, 50 years since Independence, India needs a second vision of its future," says A P J Abdul Kalam, scientific advisor to the defence minister and widely acknowledged as the father of the Indian bomb and missile programmes.

Kalam was responding to the South Indian Education Society's felicitation on Saturday of the illustrious three -- Indian Space Research Organisation chairman Dr K Kasturirangan, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Dr R Chidambaram and Kalam himself -- with the 'Lifetime Achievement Awards'. The function was part of the society's calendar of events to commemorate the 50th year of Indian independence.

Professor Gayatri Ramanathan, who spoke on behalf of the society, clarified that the decision to confer the awards to the trio was taken well before the Pokhran blasts, and there was no connection between the two. Letters were sent out to them in March itself, she said, while Pokhran II happened on May 11 and 13.

SIES, which runs a school and college in Bombay, chose Dr Kasturirangan as he was an alumnus of its school, and through him managed to rope in his two friends. In a bon homie-filled and highly emotive function, the ISRO chairman was given the award by his principal, "a taskmaster", Muthuswamy Iyer. Acknowledging the gesture by touching Iyer's feet, Kasturirangan in his speech, spoke of the importance of teachers in moulding a young student's mind, and recalled his own time spent in the school with immense nostalgia and fondness.

"Years later, Kalam once told me my understanding of many complex theories was made easier by the mathematics I learnt here, and he is correct to a large extent," the ISRO chairman said. Referring to the nuclear tests, he said there were many issues involved, and this was the proper forum to discuss them.

The country's progress over the last 50 years, he said, owed to the vision of great men like Dr Vikram Sarabhai. "What we have done is to translate that vision into reality," he pointed out.

Handing over a replica of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle to his alma mater, Dr Kasturirangan said much as he wished to present the actual hardware, government regulations did not allow for it and so he brought along only a miniature.

Taking his cue from this, Dr Chidambaram, who spoke next, wondered out loud if he was expected to give a replica of the nuclear blasts. Settling for a model of nuclear reactors, Dr Chidambaram conceded that the only reason he could see for his presence on the dais was the nuclear tests. "What the scientific community has done is to demonstrate a capability that we have long possessed," he said, and added, "If you want peace, prepare for war." National development, he emphasised, was the flipside to national security, without security the nation cannot focus on development.

Sanctions, Dr Chidambaram said, present India with an opportunity as well as challenge. The need of the hour was to synergise our efforts. Indian industry, which has grown tremendously since the peaceful nuclear explosion in 1974, needs to rise to the occasion.

India rates nowhere in the human development index, pointed out Dr Chidambaram, and went on to disagree with the criterion employed to rate nations. A more accurate method would be to use per capita consumption of electricity and female literacy as yardsticks of development. The world's affairs, he also pointed out, are decided by those who are in the frontiers of development. Whether it is nuclear power, space research or exploitation of Antarctica, international conventions and treaties arrogate the right to decide on those who are in the forefront. Given such a situation, India, as aspiring superpower, has to be a major player in all these fields.

Nuclear energy, the AEC chairman said, had many non-destructive potential as well. It is extensively used in agricultural research, and several high quality saplings and seeds are being marketed after being produced by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. "There is a type of high-quality groundnut from Akola called TAG-24, in this T stands for Tarapur and A stands for Akola agricultural university," he remarked.

But the man of the event was clearly the self-effacing director of the Defence Research and Development Organisation, Abdul Kalam. Not only was the loudest applause reserved for him, he was also mobbed by autograph-seekers at the end of the function in a manner that one normally associates with screen idols.

Addressing the young students directly, Kalam exhorted them to raise their vision and not be constrained by their surroundings, as he himself was not, and quoted the ancient Tamil sage-poet Thiruvalluvar to illustrate his point. Kalam also recalled one of his new colleagues, A V S Prasad, at the DRDO, who comes from a small town and who went on to design the 32-bit chip used in microprocessors and which has 0.5 million transistors. This indigenous chip is used in missile delivery systems and electronic warfare systems, and led to the successful launch of the Agni and Prithvi missiles.

Underlining his speech with the 'India can do it' theme, Kalam mentioned that the recently developed Indian supercomputers are 20 times faster than the vaunted CrayX-MP, and come at half the cost.

Calling for a second vision of the country to harness the current level of confidence, he said the government needed to announce a time-bound programme to make India a developed country. "There are three criterion to become one: economic development that will make the country rank in the top 10, not depending on umbilical security measures, and technological advancement. The youth, he repeated, has not to rest with vision, but have the ability to convert that vision into thought and thought into reality.

Recalling Pokhran II, Kalam said he watched the tests in Dr Chidambaram's company. "As the ground first shook and then rose, I was filled with first fear and terror, and then came pride that we had done it."

Throughout the function, the three top scientists of the country could be seen exchanging remarks, applauding each other, and displaying a general air of bonhomie. While Chidambaram was acknowledged by Dr Kasturirangan as the instiller of pragmatism in them and thus the senior among the trio, it was evident that the latter and Kalam were contemporaries.

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