Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

About

The full name of Dr. Abdul Kalam, the new President of India, is Avil Pakir Jalaluddin Abdul Kalam. He hails from the southernmost tip of India. He belongs to a very poor family of Rameshwaram.

The name of Mr. Kalam’s father is Jainulabiddin Marakayar. He was a Panchayat Board President. He was the owner of a few boats which were used to ferry pilgrims between Rameshwaram and Dhanushkody.

In 1964, a terrible sea storm-ravaged Dhanushkody. Now his boats were limited to carrying passengers between Rameshwaram and the ships which were anchored off the coast. The basic secularism of the family can be judged from the fact that Mr. Marakayar had very good relations with the holy temple of Rameshwaram and great honours were bestowed upon him by the temple management during the festivals observed in the temple.

Preliminary education and Higher education

Dr. Kalam was the youngest child in the family. He was the only one to do graduation. His brothers and sisters could not even complete their schooling. Kalam did his preliminary schooling in Rameshwaram. He later joined a missionary school in the town of Ramanathapuram. He did graduation from St. Joseph College, Tiruchi.

The poverty of the family can be judged from the fact that once his father had no resources even to pay his fee. Then his sister came to his rescue. She sold her ornaments to be able to arrange for his higher education. But for her help, we wouldn’t probably have even heard of Dr. Kalam, much less found him where he is today. This is an example how so much talent is lost by the country because of poverty. Rightly does Dr. Samuel Johnson say in his “Vanity of Human Wishes”?

“Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.”

Newspaper seller

Kalam is a typical case of a poor but determined person. As a boy, he had even to sell newspapers. It was his newspaper agent brother who initiated him into this vocation. But once he got an opportunity to show his talent, he proved to be a prodigy. It was when he got the opportunity to join aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology.

Nomination

Later, as we know, and as Dr. Kalam himself stated at his first press conference as the President-in-waiting, after filing his nomination papers and being supported by the NDA, the Congress and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party that he had for 20 years worked as a scientist, in different areas like putting satellites in orbit and developed nuclear technologies. He said that his main focus was how to transform India into a developed nation.

Dr. Kalam proved to be a man of keen acumen when reacting to the charge levelled by Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, his Left party sponsored rival candidate that his being a missile engineer his election as President at this juncture would send a “wrong signal”, he said that the “Right signal is that technology is going to be used to develop the nation”.

A man of vision and sharp acumen

He is a man of vision and wants to see India as a fully developed nation by 2020. It is to this end that his new book “India 2020: A vision for the “New Millennium” is focused. He wants to remove poverty and make India strong in all fields. He wants India to become a great economic military power.

He had a great space technology vision which has come out true and it has helped millions of people of our country. Among his achievements, we have communication through networks in remote areas; a disaster warning system; quick resource surveys to target ground water and a save forest cover campaign. The country can, indeed, hope a lot from such a visionary scientist turned politician who is being nicknamed by some (probably sneeringly)”a scientific”.

There is no doubt that Dr. Kalam’s main field is rocketry – and the development of the formidable Agni Missiles is his major achievement. However, he has helped a lot in various other fields.

For instance, no vegetable was supposed to be capable of being grown in the snow-covered remote villages of Ladakh. These vegetables had to be carried to those places from plains with great difficulty and that at great cost. It was at Dr. Kalam’s instance that the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) carried out research there and now vegetables enough to spare are grown there.

A simple man

Dr. Kalam is an extremely simple man. He is above seventy and a bachelor. He is a strict vegetarian. He is a “Workalcoholic” who knows no holidays in the seven-day week. He is a great lover of books. His meals comprise just boiled rice, sambhar and a vegetable dish.

He is not just a scientist and of the highest international standing. He has deservedly been honoured with Bharat Ratna, the nation’s highest award. He is fond of music and likes to play Rudra veena. He is well-versed in the works of Subramaniam Bharathi, a south Indian Tamil poet of great name and fame. He frequently recites verses from the Geeta. He also expresses his full faith in the holy Koran. He was greatly impressed when he saw the picture of Gandhiji in the newspapers in which he was shown going barefoot in the riot-hit Noakhali in 1947. He led a very simple, frugal life in a small accommodation in Delhi before he became the President of India. May he live long to guide the destiny of our country.