Address At The Inauguration Of The Bangalore International Centre, Bangalore

Overwhelming Question facing the Country

I am delighted to participate in the inauguration of Bangalore International Centre with the object formulated on the lines of India International Center at New Delhi. My greetings to the intellectuals who have conceived this forum, social scientists, and distinguished guests. When I think of this center I am reminded of a discussion I had some time back on the topic "Overwhelming Question facing the country. "

Overwhelming question - I was thinking and thinking, what can be the overwhelming question. I have visited all parts of our country and talked to the children, the youth and the experienced. I have also visited five countries in three continents. Particularly, I happened to address the Pan-African Parliament represented by 53 African countries. Here again I happened to meet the heads of state of these countries and the citizens. These meetings triggered many random thoughts in me. I would like to share with you, how the Father of our Nation Mahatma Gandhi working at Durban in South Africa experienced the insult and humiliation under the apartheid regime and fought back. This later on led to the birth of non-cooperation movement through non-violence. Then I recalled the connectivity with the Kalinga war scene around 2000 years back where Emperor Ashoka, while celebrating the victory in the Kalinga war, at the cost of the death of more than one hundred thousand people and equal number injured. In his victory, the emperor saw the blood bath in the moon lit night. Here we see the birth of Ahimsa Dharma, out of this tragic scene created by the Emperor himself and grow into a laudable philosophy that spread across the world.

What is that injustice for India today? The injustice that we have to fight today according to me is the societal and economic impoverishment and inequality in various aspects of life for a large number of people. India's movement in removing this impoverished state will become a trend setter for the whole planet as in the past. When India got the freedom in 1947, many nations in Asia and Africa were inspired to fight for freedom and realize freedom for their nations. Hence the overwhelming question which I would like to reflect today is that - when will India become a developed nation? - And show the way to the other developing nations. Will history repeat itself?

Our National mission - challenges

Our nation is going through a major challenge of uplifting of 260 million people who are below the poverty line and also to give better life for many millions who are on the border line of poverty or just above the poverty line. They need decent habitat, they need work with reasonable income, they need food, they need health care, and they need education and finally resulting into a good life. Our GDP is growing at more than 7% per annum on an average. Whereas, the economists suggest that to uplift the people from below the poverty line, our economy has to grow at the rate of 10% per annum consistently, for over a decade.

Integrated action

To meet the need of one billion people, we have the mission of transforming India into a developed nation. We have identified five areas where India has a core competence for integrated action: (1) Agriculture and food processing (2) Reliable and Quality Electric power, Surface transport and Infrastructure for all parts of the country. (3) Education and Healthcare (4) Information and Communication Technology (5) Strategic sectors. These five areas are closely inter-related and if well done would lead to national, food, economic and security.

Engines for Growth

Emphasis should be on full utilization of natural and human resources of the nation to meet the demands of the modern society. We should also remember that about 50% of our population is young people with aspirations for better living. Value addition to Agriculture, Manufacturing and Service sectors, building the national core competence and technologies will lead to additional high income employment potential. The engines for growth will be accelerated by launching of the five national missions viz. water, energy, education and skills, infrastructure and employment generation that will enable achievement of 10% GDP growth rate per annum. It is possible to do so with ecological and economic sustainability.

With these aspects, we have already laid down the road map. The priority for the government is to convert the road map into various missions. While converting the vision into different missions we seem to have many thoughts and variety of routes to reach the goal. This is where there is a need to have a coherent thinking among all the members of the society. All of them need to think that the nation is greater than an individual or an organization. There is a mindset among many that ?we cannot do it?. However in my experience with many departments in the country and the observations of the results of some of them in the mission mode projects, I can assure you whenever we have decided to achieve certain goals with clear targets, we have always achieved it. I have seen this even in private and public sector industries - if they decide to take up tasks as a mission, they succeed. I would like to give some examples.

Our experiences in Mission mode

During 1960?s, I remember that India was in a state of ship to mouth existence in food. If the American ships did not bring wheat, there will be a famine in India. But there were two visionaries who worked together with the farming community and brought the first green revolution. They are the political thinker Shri. C. Subramaniam and the Agriculture scientist Dr. M.S. Swaminathan. Around the same time, Dr Varghese Kurien masterminded the white revolution. Today we produce two hundred million tonnes of food grains, which is not only sufficient for us but we can also export. Similarly, the white revolution resulted in placing India at the top of the world map of milk producers.

In India much innovation and creative thinking took place at various phases of our development. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai in 1960?s said that India should design and develop large satellite launch vehicle and put communication satellite and remote sensing satellite in geo-synchronous orbit and polar orbit respectively. This vision statement ignited hundreds of scientist, technologists and thousands of technicians. Today India is capable of building any type of satellite launch vehicles and satellites. Similarly the Vision of nuclear programme led to establishing series of nuclear power plants adding 3000 megawatt power to our electrical grid of 100,000 megawatt. There is a proposal to increase the nuclear power to 20,000 megawatt by 2020.

In the 80?s, India had a very low base in Information Technology. Some young entrepreneurs with their innovative and creative thoughts and within the difficult boundary conditions of India?s rules and regulations, demonstrated how IT enabled services can fetch export revenue. Subsequently, even Government had to bring out innovative and liberalized IT policies. Now, our young IT entrepreneurs are making export revenue of 15 billion dollars. This is expected to grow to more than 100 billion dollars by the year 2020. Similarly the Pharma industries are making a positive impact in the Indian economy. Our garment industry and our export of flowers and diamond are not far behind. Our auto-component and auto mobile industries have made remarkable breakthroughs. Our cement industry has great achievements in energy efficiency. Fly ash utilization which was just 3% in 1993 is now close to 25% after mission mode approach. It will further grow as fly ash has multiple applications.

These successful missions give us the confidence that as a country we have the resources and the capability to achieve challenging missions, if only we decide to achieve it. Our development should not be in the pattern of ?following the West? like the US, Europe or Russia. We have to ensure that we achieve the development goals keeping our civilizational heritage intact. We have to ensure that the development brings harmony at home, order in the nation and peace in the world. For that righteousness is the basic requirement, which is to be promoted among all citizens of the country. Now I am reminded of the divine hymn.

Righteousness

Where there is righteousness in the heart

There is beauty in the character.

When there is beauty in the character,

there is harmony in the home.

When there is harmony in the home.

There is an order in the nation.

When there is order in the nation,

There is peace in the world.

My visualization of that competitive Developed India is the profile, which I would like to share with you today.

Profile of Competitive India

1. A Nation where the rural and urban divide has reduced to a thin line.

2. In Political science there are two components. (a) political politics and (b) development politics. The national parties and legislative assemblies will work in mission mode on development politics and there by developed India will be in sight.

3. A Nation where there is an equitable distribution of energy and quality water.

4. A Nation where agriculture, industry and service sector work together in symphony, absorbing technology thereby resulting in sustained wealth generation leading to higher employment potential.

5. A Nation where education is not denied to any meritorious candidates because of societal or economic discrimination.

6. A Nation which is the best destination for the most talented scholars and scientists all over the world.

7. A Nation where the best of health care is available to all the billion population and the communicable diseases like AIDS/TB, water and vector borne diseases, Cardiac diseases and Cancer are extinct.

8. A Nation where the governance uses the best of the technologies to be responsive, transparent, easily accessible and simple in rules, thereby corruption free.

9. A Nation where poverty has been totally alleviated, illiteracy and crime against women are eradicated and the society is unalienated.

10. A Nation that is prosperous, healthy, secure, peaceful and happy.

11. A Nation that is one of the best places to live in, on the earth and brings smiles on a billion plus faces.

These are the eleven dimensional transformations needed for competitive India and we have to work for it. One of the very important instrument through which it can be achieved is the creation of large number of PURA Complexes in our rural areas with Physical Connectivity, Electronic Connectivity, Knowledge Connectivity leading to Economic Connectivity. In addition we have to train our youth to become entrepreneurs and employment generators rather than being employment seekers. For this Bangalore has already created a precedence through first and second generation IT professionals who established progressive ICT institutions in the state and today Karnataka exporting ICT products and services of around Rs. Twentyeight thousand crores.

Conclusion: Enlightened Citizenship

I have listed before you many facets of "The Overwhelming Question' before us today.

What is needed to accomplish this mission is the evolution of enlightened and visionary leaders amongst us in all walks of life whether it be politics, administration, religion, business, education or science which has a bearing on the evolution of our nation and the society. And, enlightened leadership is all about empowerment. When a child is empowered by the parents, he gets transformed into a responsible citizen. When a teacher is empowered with knowledge, a guru emerges. When women are empowered, a stable society gets established. When the political leaders of a nation empower the people through visionary policies, the prosperity of a nation is assured. When religions are empowered to become a spiritual force, peace and happiness blossoms in the society. It is thus, the need of the hour to develop enlightened leadership amongst various sections of our society who will have a vision and a commitment to peace, progress and development. When a leader of any institution empowers the people working with them, such leaders are created who can change the course of the nation itself. Empowerment by enlightened leaders will lead to the creation of enlightened citizens who have a strong value system. In short, my road map for answering ?the overwhelming question? has three components. Firstly we should inculcate education with a value system in our children, secondly ? ensure that religion graduates into a spiritual force and thirdly we should develop an enlightened leadership with visionary policies to lead the way towards national, global and economic prosperity. I believe that enlightened citizens can also be evolved with all these three elements properly combined for a long term and dedicated solution for our nation. It is the work of an enlightened and visionary leadership to make it into a movement. I am sure, the members of Bangalore International Centre will participate in this mission by creating an environment for productive debate on all the crucial issues facing the development of the nation. This will automatically lead to the transformation of India into a developed nation well before 2020. I inaugurate the Bangalore International Centre and wish the members success in their mission of providing intellectual input to the social economic challenges facing the nation.

May God bless you.