Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam once said, “A developed India by 2020, or even earlier, is not a dream. It might not be a mere vision in the minds of many Indians. It is a mission we can all take up and succeed.” He taught us to transform dreams into thoughts, thoughts into actions.
Today, as we stand in the year 2020, we should remember that our ‘Missile Man’ had sketched a vision for India 2020. However, we shouldn’t refrain from realising we aren’t as close to the DREAM as Dr APJ ABDUL KALAM would’ve expected us to be. It is rather disappointing to notice the fall in the pace of development that we have seen in the phase after industrialisation.
Dr Abdul Kalam had included the following in his vision:
- Reduction of urban, rural divide into a thin line
- Equal distribution and access to energy and drinking water
- Unification of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors
- Assurance of education on merit with complete disregard of societal and economic status
- Making the nation the best place for research, scholars, scientists and inventors
- Availability of best of healthcare to all
- Transparency in governance and responsiveness from government that is a corruption-free one.
- Complete eradication of poverty, illiteracy and crimes against women and children.
- A secure, happy, peaceful nation following a path of sustainable growth
- A country that is the best place to live and the people are proud of its leadership.
How far do you think we have achieved the set milestone. It is deeply saddening that we cannot even stand by a single point and claim we have achieved that in the present scenario.
This vision 2020 was shared by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, in his book ‘INDIA 2020’, which was written along with Dr Y S Rajan that came into circulation in 1998.
The progress that his thought envisioned would have been achieved if there was a consistent 10 per cent growth in 10 continuous years in agriculture, but the country has till date never seen such massive growth, we did touch the mark of 8 -9, but a solid ten could never come in the fate of the nation.
Dr Abdul Kalam’s former scientific advisor V Ponraj also said that we are not close to 2020 vision at all.
India’s developmental policy has been focused on tax regulations and other explicit factors instead it should have been more implicit in nature; where the government focused on internal development, education system regulations, skill enhancement of the public, healthcare and others. Instead, still, the government is driven exclusively towards FDI.
Acquisition of flip kart by Walmart shunned the entrepreneurs around the world who dreamt of making it a very demotivating factor for the young generations to innovate.
A report by IBM Institute of Business Value and Oxford Economics found that 90 % of Indian startup’s fail in their first five years of running. Many factors as such have affected the hope for getting any closer to the vision envisioned by Dr Kalam.
Death of 134 infants in a hospital in Rajkot, because of poor health care, places like Gujarat, Rajasthan and others have been facing such problems.
This proves further how far we still are to the dream envisioned by our missile-man more than a decade ago! Though there is a group or private organization called “Visionaries Organisation In Service to Society (VOISS)” which is popularly known as “Let’s complete his vision 2020” to promote this vision 2020; Is it only their responsibility? Don’t the young generation want a country which our missile-man thought off? Its time we question ourselves and authorities why such a massive setback when we claim to be a progressing/developing country.
