THE PEOPLE’S PRESIDENT

 

“Dream, dream, dream. Dreams transform into thoughts and thoughts result in action.”

On a fine day, Dr. Abdul Kalam was teaching his students about “Vision Mission” at Anna University and that class got prolonged for around 2 hours rather than the usual, as he was super excited to clarify the students’ doubts. When he was returning to his stay area, Prof. Dr. Kalanithi, the then Vice-chancellor, interrupted him in a hurry saying that the Prime Minister of India had been waiting to talk to Kalam. He further insisted him to say only ‘Yes’ whatever the PM asked him for and urged him to go as early as possible. Kalam was quite bewildered and when he had rushed to his room, he heard his phone ringing. He picked up the phone call and someone from the PM’s office told him that Prime Minister Vajpayee Ji had wanted to talk to him and asked if he was free. He said okay and asked the person to connect him to the PM.  In the meantime, N. Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, had called him and asked him to say only yes whatever the PM was going to ask him later. There awaited a surprise!  Vajpayee was connected to Kalam and he had told him that the NDA party and some of the supported parties were planning to nominate him for the presidential candidate and urged him to say ‘okay’ and nothing else. He got stunned for a while! He asked him if he could tell his decision after a couple of hours. PM agreed and asked if he had any more concerns about it. Kalam further asked him if all the parties (both the ruling party and the opposition party) agreed to his nomination. PM replied like, some had agreed, and he had been waiting for the latter’s reply and based on which he would circulate the matter to all parties.

Kalam spoke to his friends, Professors, Bureaucrats who were from different fields like research, teaching, Government departments, etc., All suggested him to take up this offer and it would be an extraordinary opportunity for him to serve the country and this way he could be connected to the people of India in all means. After 2 hours, he was connected to Vajpayee and he expressed his affirmative reply to him. He also stressed that he would file his nomination, if and only if all the parties would agree for his candidature and he would be nominating on behalf of “The People of India” and not from any political party. Vajpayee smiled and concurred to his words, told him that he would speak to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, the opposition party leader, and get her official consent.

 Once the PM ensured Kalam’s conditions after discussing with all parties, the latter had filed his nomination. Ultimately, Kalam came out with flying colours and was elected as the 11^th President of India in 2002 and came to Rashtrapati Bhawan. During his oath-taking ceremony, he took around 30 members from his side, including, his own brother and his family who had brought him up and helped him during his studies, then the Archagar (Priest) of Rameshwaram-Ramanthaswamy temple, who taught him about Moon and the Universe, sowed seeds towards his thoughts on space exploration, then his college Professors, and his mentors and friends from ISRO, DRDO, and several Government departments.

As soon as he had pledged as President, he digitized the way of reading and responding to people’s petitions in the President’s office. Before his term as the President, all the petitions were paper-written, and many went unnoticed. It was Kalam, who brought the digitization of the whole process by taking necessary actions for each petition sent by Indians, either redirecting it to several departments for action, or he had helped them with monetary support, or he had created several opportunities for their requests. Then onwards, it took only 5 hours for the President's office to reply to the petitions and they started maintaining a database for them. Within his term of office of 6 months, he had conducted several ‘Breakfast mornings’ with MPs/MLAs from all the states and Union Territories of India, to know about the people needs, infrastructure requirements, agricultural developments for their areas. As per him, the country’s vision towards growth was in improving rural areas and he had formulated a strategy called PURA (Provision of Urban Amenities to Rural Areas) to provide urban infrastructure and services to rural people to generate economic opportunities, which in turn would stop the migration of labours towards cities. This way, Kalam took every move for the betterment of the people of India during his tenure as President.