VISION 2020 IS A POSSIBILITY
This is my speech from debates.......
Dr A P J Abdul Kalam is a fool. Or so my worthy opponents seem to think. The people’s president, one of the greatest scientists our country has produced. To even suggest that a vision he has endorsed so strongly is an impossibility is insult to his genius. When one of our country’s greatest minds is assured of its success why do we find it so difficult to fathom?
We are a great nation. Our achievements are nothing short of astounding. According to a journalist at Newsweek “Today everyone wants to be in India. The world is courting India as it never has before.”
Why?
We are a great nation. Our achievements are astounding. We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat and rice in the world. We have the fastest growing economic growth rate. 40 richest Indians are worth $170 Billion. 38% of doctors in USA are Indians. 36% of NASA scientists are Indians. The ISRO is the biggest threat to NASA’s monopoly on space research. Our communication systems are the most developed in the world. The Indian media has been hailed as the most proactive in the world. The IT sector is growing at an incredible pace. We have the richest cricket board in the world. Outsourcing is India’s business. Our Biotechnological sector is the fastest growing in the world. Bollywood is the biggest entertainment industry in the world. We have so much. Why then is it so difficult for us to believe that our country can achieve the objectives of vision 2020??
My opponents and skeptics seem to question “India? With its vast slums, dilapidated infrastructure and barely there villages? India with illiteracy, poverty, unemployment and corruption at every doorstep? Is that the India you believe is going to achieve VISION 2020? Yes, because that is no longer India. The India of today is awake and ready. The India of today has something different. SPIRIT. The spirit that can be seen right from the highest corporate office to the smallest slum. This spirit is what will make Vision 2020 a possibility. India is growing because Indians want it to. No longer are they satisfied with simply pointing their finger at authorities. They, we, have come to realize that in order to succeed you have to “be the change you want to see”. Our country has woken up to its potential and it is determined to soar.
A famous Indian once put it eloquently, "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." Famous words, spoken by the country’s first prime minister just after midnight, on Aug. 15, 1947. What Nehru was referring to, of course, was the birth of India as an independent state. What we are witnessing today is the birth of India as an independent society—boisterous, colorful, open, vibrant and, above all, ready for change. India's growth maybe messy, chaotic and largely unplanned but India is growing.
“ We no longer discuss the future of India," Commerce Minister Kamal Nath “Simply because the future is India.” The nation of 1.1 billion people after 60 years of independence deservingly stands poised on the edge of economic, political and social greatness. "Our Time is Now," asserts The Times of India.
Rabindranath Tagore had a vision for our country that ends thus:
“Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
Let my country awake.”
The awakening is now. The awakening is this. The awakening is Vision 2020.
