Ask any Indian about the office of the President of India, and it is most likely that he will say it is a largely ceremonial post. Ask him to read India’s former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s recently published book ‘Turning Points: A Journey Through Challenges,’ and he is sure to have his knowledge enhanced.
Generations have grown up associating the high presidential office with ceremonies and national pageants on occasions such as the independence and republic days.
Each of the seven turning points mentioned by Kalam that he says changed the course of his life, also enriched the nation on various levels, because at every turn he made a valuable contribution to the life and times of the country.
The tone of the book is far removed from the typical ‘this is what the president does or should do 1-2-3…’ In fact, reading it one realizes that the numerous activities, at various levels, plans, projects and perspectives, that Kalam was actively involved in, have raised the office from a figure head to a dynamic one.
This reviewer was reminded of Shakespeare’s beautiful lines:
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name”
Not taking the lines too literally, one can grasp the spirit of the point that is being made.
An extraordinary personality that he is, Kalam has brought the high office from color and pageantry to the community and public prominence. If one takes just the presidential house (Rashtrapati Bhavan), one of the first things that Kalam did was to initiate e-governance. Another action worth noting was building a virtual conference and a virtual meeting facility to have brainstorming sessions with experts from different organizations located in distant areas.
He also added value to the Rashtrapati Bhavan estate by developing its landscape and creating additional green space.
During his tenure it was the first time in the history of the Parliament or the Rahstrapati Bhavan that a president returned a bill for reconsideration despite tremendous pressure on him from parties to sign the Office of Profit Bill.
According to him, the Parliament as an institution faces greater challenges than ever before since its creation in 1951, especially on matters related to human development and governance.
Welcoming the increase in political parties from five in the first Lok Sabha (House of Commons) to nearly 50 in the fourteenth Lok Sabha, he stresses that this has to be taken advantage of. He goes on to add that individual MPs (members of Parliament) doing good work in the Parliament need to be “consciously recognized” and “politically rewarded” in their constituencies and within their political parties and coalitions.
The book projects his vision of India as a developed nation before 2020, which he is confident will be achieved.
He recounts that the presidency was a challenge for him, and it became a platform to launch India 2020, which, he says, “can only be achieved by the participation of all citizens including elected representatives all the way up to Parliament, administrators, artists and writers, and the youth of the country.”
Even after leaving office, he has been to a number of countries on special invitations, where he has visited universities, research institutions, attended industry and world youth conferences, and attended more than 1,200 programs, all of which have now been developed into World Vision 2030, which goes to show his universality of thinking.
Talking about the Parliament, Kalam says, “The twenty-first-century Parliamentary Vision for India needs to have a global and long-term perspective.”
It should not be surprising if the book turns out to be a turning point in the lives of some of us in the way we think, feel and act in the interest of the nation – with commitment, effort and self-sacrifice.
Many feel that politics in India is more, than less, the same as it was during the independence movement. Kalam says that at that time it was essential and adds that politics has two dimensions – the familiar world of independence era political parties or ‘political politics,’ and ‘developmental politics.’
He argues that with 260 million living below the poverty line, an illiteracy rate of 34 percent, and more than 36 million employment seekers, “our mission has to be to make India a developed nation that is free from poverty, illiteracy and unemployment. This situation necessitates developmental politics.”
Kalam was the only president to ever visit an area soon after bloody communal riots (Gujarat in 2002). He writes, “In our land, with its heritage of a highly evolved civilization and where great men were born and stood tall as role models for the entire world, communal riots, with their attendant tragedy, are an aberration.”
The book is a must read, especially for the youth, on whom Kalam places a lot of hope and faith.
If they do so, it will be a tribute and a way of expressing thanks to one of the all-time Indian greats. Indeed, we all can learn from a great man who is not only a thinker, with a poetic strain in him, but a doer as well. An expression — “differently abled” people – that has been used in the book needs to be widely used, replacing “special needs” people, because it correctly describes these people. The word “needs” implies dependence on others, whereas the former recognizes that they are able, but in a different way.
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