History says that human beings have since long been fighting on some point or another.
During the prehistoric age, wars were fought for meeting the requirements of food and livelihood.
India can become a leader in the field of technology.
I offer my reverence to my parents, the family members and teachers, and remember with respect those who are no more, whose nearness I was blessed with.
I am indebted to Prof. Sarabhai and Prof. Satish Dhawan also, who always imparted knowledge to me and who remained a source of inspiration always.
Every particle in the Creation of God has its own existence. God has created each and every thing with a certain purpose. I, too, am one of those things. Whatever I have achieved with His blessings, is nothing but the manifestation of His own will.
None, among the millions and millions of people in India, should feel small or helpless.
In all my life of science and technology, I have always tried to follow the teachings of my father.
Our first halt used to be at the temple of Lord Shiva and we used to go round the temple with reverence—the same reverence with which any pilgrim comes to this place. And after going round the temple we used to be filled with great energy also.
I have never had a doubt that like prayers offerd in a temple reach God in the same manner Namaz offered in a mosque also reaches God.
It is more than half a century since I earned my first wages during my childhood days by selling newspapers thrown out of train, and I still feel proud of the wages earned by me for the first time.
I inherited honesty and self-discipline from my father and faith in God and compassion from my mother.
As taught by my brother-in-law, Jallaluddin, I worked hard to achieve my target and remain resolute and firm.
While working at the provision store of my elder brother, Mustafa Kamal, I found that the fastest moving items were cigarettes and bidis. I used to wonder what made poor people smoke away their hard-earned money.
I wonder why people view science as something which takes man away from God. In Dr. Abdul Kalam’s own words—“As I look at it, the path of science can always wind through the heart. For me, science has always been the path to spiritual enrichment and self-realisation.”
Honestly speaking, I have never been able to understand why people think that the faraway planets affect our daily life on earth.
There is great movement within everything stationary. Dr. Abdul Kalam says—“It is as though the great dance of Shiva is being performed on eartth during every moment of our existence.’’
My sister, Zohara’s mort-gaging her bangles and chain for arranging one thousand rupees for my education at MIT was proof enough of her faith in my abilities. I was deeply touched by the sacrifice made by her.
I myself would like to tell all novitiate engineering students that while choosing their speciali-zation what their point of consideration should be is that their choice should always be supported by their inner feelings and aspirations.
Tamil is my mother-tongue and I am proud of its origins. The period of its origin is pre-Ramayana and has been traced back to the period of Sage Agastya.
I used to feel pained to see the people coming to Kanpur in search of jobs in factories, leaving behind the smell of their soil and the protection of their families.
When I got a chance to lead a team formed to design and develop an indigenous hovercraft, I decided that I shall myself create opportunities of my own.
Forgetting all my problems outside I used to enter the assembly shop just in the manner my father used to leave his shoes outside before entering the mosque.
There are boundaries that dictate life : You can only lift so much weight; you can only learn so fast; you can only work so hard; you can only go so far!
The best performances are accomplished when you are relaxed and free of doubt.
One of the important functions of prayer, I believe, is to act as a stimulus to creative ideas. Within the mind are all the resources required for successful living. Ideas are present in the consciousness, which when released and given scope to grow and take shape, can lead to successful events. God, our Creator, has stored within our minds and personalities, great potential strength and ability. Prayer helps us to tap and develop these powers.
Unfortunately, the only line prominently drawn in our country today is between the ‘heroes’ and the ‘zeros’. On one side a few hundred ‘heroes’ keeping nine hundred and fifty million people down on the other side. This situation has to be changed.
As the process of confronting and solving problems often requires hard word and is painful, we have endless procrastination. Actually, problems can be the cutting edge that actually distinguish between success and failure. They draw out innate courage and wisdom.
Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-harted success that breeds bitterness all around. If you are a writer who would secretly prefer to be a lawyer or a doctor, your written words will feed but half the hunger of your readers; if you are a teacher who would rather be a businessman, your instructions will meet but half the need for knowledge of your students; if you are a scientist who hates science, your performance will satisfy but half the needs of your mission.
I have always been a religious person in the sense that I maintain a working partnership with God. I was aware that the best work required more ability than I possessed and therefore I needed help that only God could give me. I made a true estimate of my own ability, then raised it by 50 per cent and put myself in God’s hands. In this partnership, I have always received all the power I needed, and in fact have actually felt it flowing through me. Today, I can affirm that the kingdom of God is within you in the form of this power, to help achieve your goals and realise your dreams.
There are many different types and levels of experience that turn this internal power reaction critical. Sometimes, when we are ready, the gentlest of contacts with Him fills us with insight and wisdom. This could come from an encounter with another person, from a word, a question, a gesture or even a look. Many a time, it could come even through a book, a conversation, some phrase, even a line from a poem or the mere sight of a picture. Without the slightest warning, something new breaks into your life and a secret decision is taken, a decision that you may be completely unconscious of, to start with.
I have always considered the price of perfection prohibitive and allowed mistakes as a part of the learning process. I prefer a dash of daring and persistence to perfection. I have always supported learning on the part of my team members by paying vigilant attention to each of their attempts, be they successful or unsuccessful.
How good is a leader? No better than his people and their commitment and participation in the project as full partners! The fact that I got them all together to share whatever little development had been achieved—results, experiences, small successes, and the like—seemed to me worth putting all my energy and time into. It was a very small price to pay for that commitment and sense of teamwork, which could in fact be called trust. Within my own small group of people I found leaders, and learned that leaders exist at every level.
The essence of our method of work was an emphasis on communication, particularly in the lateral direction, among the teams and within the teams. In a way, communication was my mantra for managing this gigantic project.
What can one do to strengthen personal freedom? I would like to share with you two techniques I adopt in this regard.
First, by building your own education and skills. Knowledge is a tangible asset, quite often the most important tool in your work. The more up-to-date the knowledge you possess, the freer you are. Knowledge cannot be taken away from anyone except by obsolescence. A leader can only be free to lead his team if he keeps abreast of all that is happening around him—in real time. To lead, in a way, is to engage in continuing education. In many countries, it is normal for professionals to go to college several nights every week. To be a successful team leader, one has to stay back after the din and clutter of a working day to emerge better-equipped and ready to face a new day.
The second way is to develop a passion for personal responsibility. The sovereign way to personal freedom is to help determine the forces that determine you. Be active! Take on responsibility! Work for the things you believe in. If you do not, you are surrendering your fate to others. The historian Edith Hamilton wrote of ancient Greece, “When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. The truth is that there is a great deal that most of us can individually do to increase our freedom. We can combat the forces that threaten to oppress us. We can fortify ourselves with the qualities and conditions that promote individual freedom. In doing so, we help to create a stronger organization, capable of achieving unprecedented goals.
In my opinion, a project leader should always work with proven technologies in most of the systems as far as possible and experiment only from multiple resources.
If we can identify those performance dimensions which are most highly correlated with job success, we can put them together to form a blueprint for outstanding performance in both thought and action.
To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal. Individuals like myself are often called ‘workaholics’. I question this term because that implies a pathological condition or an illness. If I do that which I desire more than anything else in the world and which makes me happy, such work can never be an aberration.
Total commitment is a crucial quality for those who want to reach the very top of their profession. The desire to work at optimum capacity leaves hardly any room for anything else.
Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.
Climbing to the top demands strength, whether to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.
I have never lived off the profits of others minds. My life, in keeping with my nature, has never been that of a ruthless achiever.
I had read somewhere, “Know where you are going. The great thing in the work is not knowing so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”
Perhaps the main motive behind my isolation was my desire to escape from the demands of relationships, which I consider very difficult in comparison to making rockets.
Another aspect of a person’s working style is control—the energy and attention devoted to ensuring that things happen in a certain way. At one extreme is the tight controller, a strict administrator with frequent checkpoints. Rules and policies are to be followed with religious fervour. At the opposite end are those who move with freedom and flexibility. They have little patience for bureaucracy. They delegate easily and give their subordinates wide latitude for movement.
Creating the RCI was perhaps the most satisfying experience of my life. Developing this centre of excellence of missile technology was akin to the joy of a potter shaping artifacts of lasting beauty from the mundane clay.
Seshan is a person who enjoys verbally bringing adversaries to their knees. Using his sharp-edged humour, Seshan would make his opponents look ridiculous.
The circumstances of Shrimati Gandhi’s death were very ominous. The memories of her visit barely three months ago further deepened my pain. Why should great people meet with such horrific ends?
Madam Gandhi was a taskmaster, whereas Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi used his charisma to achieve his ends. He told the DRDL family that he realised the hardships faced by Indian scientists and expressed his gratitude towards those who preferred to stay back and work in their motherland rather than go abroad for comfortable careers.
A big shot is a little shot who keeps on shooting, so keep trying.
It has been my personal experience that the true flavour, the real fun, the continuous excitement of work lie in the process of doing it rather than in having it over and done with. The return to the four basic factors that I am convinced are involved in successful outcomes: goal-setting, positive thinking, visualizing, and believing.
I have always had a deep regard for academic institutions and reverence for excellent academicians. I value the inputs the academicians can make to development.
When a person looks at himself, he is likely to misjudge what he finds.
A good leader must identify two different sets of environmental features. One, which satisfies a person’s needs and the other, which creates dissatisfaction with his work.
Always encouraged to follow Buddha’s or Gandhi’s teachings, how and why did India become a missile power is a question that needs to be answered for future generations.
The bitter experiences of 1962 forced us to take the basic first steps towards missile development.
Involvement, participation and commitment were the key words to fuctioning.
Naturally major opportunities are accompanied by equally major challenges. We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us. The country doesn’t deserve anything less than success from us. Let us aim for success.
Should we not uphold the mandate bequeathed to us by our forefathers who fought for the liberation of our country from imperialism? Only when we are technologically self-reliant will we able (sic) to fulfill their dream.
Agni was the conclusion of a technological effort that was given its start by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when the country decided to break free from the paralysing fetters of technological backwardness and slough off the dead skin of subordination to industrialized nations.
I still lived more or less as I had lived then—in a room ten feet wide and twelve feet long, furnished mainly with books, papers and a few pieces of hired furniture. The only difference was at that time, my room was in Trivandrum and now it was in Hyderabad.
A large number of scientists and engineers leave this country at their first opportunity to earn more money abroad. It is true that they definitely get greater monetary benefits, but could anything compensate for this love and respect from one’s own countrymen?
Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended.
Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness.
Now, this is where the key to the modern world order lies—superiority through technology. Deprive the opponent of the latest technology and then dictate your terms in an unequal contest.
The biggest problem Indian youth faced, I felt was a lack of clarity of vision, a lack of direction.
What I wanted to say was that no one, however poor, underprivileged or small, need feel disheartened about life. Problems are a part of life. Suffering is the essence of success.
I will not be presumptuous enough to say that my life can be a role model for anybody; but some poor child living in an obscure place, in an underprivileged social setting may find a little solace in the way my destiny has been shaped. It could perhaps help such children liberate themselves from the bondage of their illusory backwardness and hopelessness. Irrespective of where they are right now, they should be aware that God is with them and when, He is with them, who can be against them?
If someone asks me about my personal achievements in Indian rocketry, I would pin it down to having created an environment for teams of young people to put their heart and soul into their missions.
The stem of the tree is the moleculare structure in which all actions are formative, all policies are normative, and all decisions are integrative. The branches of this tree are resources, assets, operations, and products which are nourished by the stem through a continuous performance evaluation and corrective update.
A characteristic feature of this social authoritarianism is its insidious ability to addict people to the endless pursuit of external rewards, wealth, prestige, position, promotion, approval of one’s lifestyle by others, ceremonial honours, and status symbols of all kinds.
The culture of working for material possessions and rewards must be discarded.
The entire nation will benefit by having strong, inner-directed people as their leaders.
Your willingness to use your own inner resources to invest your life, especially your imagination, will bring you success. When you undertake a task from your own uniquely individual standpoint, you will become a person.
You, me, everyone on this planet is sent free by Him to cultivate all the creative potential within us and live at peace with our own conscience. We differ in the way we make our choices and evolve our destiny. Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person. And to retain this right, you will have to be willing to take the social or external risks involved in ignoring pressures to do things the way others say they should be done.
Each is an example of a strong inner strength and initiative.
I am not a philosopher. I am only a man of technology.
This great country will make great strides in all the fields if we think like a united nation of 900 million people.
This story will end with me, for I have no inheritance in the worldly sense. I have acquired nothing, built nothing, possess nothing—no family, sons, daughters.
I do not wish to set myself as an example to others, but I believe that a few souls may draw inspiration and come to balance that ultimate satisfaction which can only be found in the life of the spirit.
His grace will never end, for it is Eternal.
I earnestly hope and pray that the development resulting from these two plans—Self Reliance Mission and Technology Vision—2020—will eventually make our country strong and prosperous, a “developed” nation.
(The above thoughts of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam have been chosen from his autobiography—‘Wings of Fire’ : courtesy)
