Ignited Minds - Unleashing the power within India.

Dream, Dream, Dream
Dream transform into thoughts
And thoughts result in action.

Motivating India's people, and its youth especially, is the central theme of Ignited Minds, which continues the trajectory of thoughts from Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's earlier books, Wings Of Fire and India 2020: A Vision for the New Millenium. Dr Kalam spurs us on so that India turns into a developed nation by the year 2020.
Having relied on the power and potential of youth all through his career in the field of technology and its management, he is sure given the freedom to achieve and guided properly, we, the young blood of India can accomplish far more and craft a perfect future enviable to the very best.
His quest has taken him to schools, the country side, ashrams and other places. The vast untouched natural resources, untapped mineral wealth and unattended biodiversity show the enormous potential of our country and the unforeseen challenges that are dawning in.

Where are we making a mistake? What is it that we as a nation are missing? For at the heart of Ignited Minds is an irresistible premise: the people of a nation have the power, by dint of hard work, to realize their dream of a truly good life. Dr Kalam stresses that there seems to be an attitude problem as if we cannot shake ourselves out of the mindset of limited achievement. The book is all about breaking away from the forces that would prefer us to remain a nation of a billion people selling cheap labour and raw material and providing large market for goods and services of other nations.

He stimulates us to 'Start Moving', lead the country into prosperity through innovative entrepreneurship. Ignited Minds is about developing that 'winning conviction' in ourselves and discard things that hold us back. He stresses so much on building technologies indeginously rather than being subsurvient to other countries. He compares the lifetime of a country to that of a man as described by Dr Wayne W Dyer in his book Manifest Your Destiny. It passes through a set of stages starting from the athlete stage (a nation fresh from an independence struggle), warrior stage (proud of achievement, it demonstrates its power), big brother stage (helping others become better) and finally a stage where nation understands its true essence - The realization stage.What we require is spirituality integrated with education. What is spirituality to a school going kid? Spirituality has many forms and Dr Kalam speaks of its simplest kinds - humanity, brotherhood, compassion.

We require role models, visionaries who can inspire and motivate us to give our best. Mother, Father and elementary school teachers play a very important part as role models. When we grow up, the role models change to national leaders of quality and integrity.
It was heartening to read so many instances when young children asked Dr Kalam questions which a normal person might never give a thought about.

One was: 'Why cannot water from the Brahmaputra, which is in flood much of the time, be diverted to Rajasthan or Tamil Nadu which are starved of water?'
'Who is our enemy ?' - POVERTY (said a girl studying in class 12 to whom Dr. Kalam has dedicated this book) . It is the root cause of our problems and should be the object of our fight, not our own.

What we need today is to home-grow our own model of development based on our inherent strengths. Emerging technologies like telemedicine and e-commerce can greatly help in accessing remote areas.The most important and urgent task before our leadership today is to get all the forces for a constructive change together and deploy them in a mission mode. The second vision envisaged by Dr Kalam is to bring about a renaissance to the nation in the hands of visionary leadership.

Dr Kalam remembers the ancient India which was knowledge society and contributed greatly to the civilization. He wants to bring about a revolution of constructuve thinking and foresees a knowledge society by 2010 which would supplant all negative thoughts and failures with the spirit of victory.
One of the most impressive personality traits of Dr Kalam is visible after his miraculous escape in a helicopter crash. He is unperturbed by the incident and instead talks about the vast untapped natural resources of Jharkhand and how the new formed state can utilize its potential to the very best. The villages integration plan proposed by Dr Kalam also proves his simple and logical approach. His model 'involves selecting a ring of villages; connectng the villages on the ring by a high quality transport and telecommunication system;encouraging reputed specialists to locate schools, hospitals and other social services around the ring'.

For India 2020, five areas have been identified where India has core competance for integrated action. These include agriculture and food processing, power, education and healthcare, IT and the strategic sector. Dr Kalam reiterates the need for a knowledge society. Today, in terms of overall GDP, India is twelfth; in terms of GDP per capita, we are fifty-seventh. He questions if this status acceptable to us ? Especially to the young ?
Dr Kalam also gives a strong example in which a US company refused to supply the berrillium diaphragms to India on security grounds. Technology was denied and it emerged that India had the largest deposit of berillium ore. It was processed by Japan and then exported to US for production. Where was our sense of initiative ? Berrillium export was henceforth stopped. India is held as a poor nation inspite of its enormous wealth because it does not focus on value addition.

Personally, the most inspiring part of Dr Kalam's book was from the following lines:
'I realized then that if something is at stake, the human mind gets ignited and working capacity gets enhanced manifold. Challenges throw up opportunites. Once one selects a task, one should get immersed in it. Either you will succeed or fail; that risk will always be there. This should not deter you. when you fail, you still have the experience gained to draw upon in the future.
Start by risking your own position for a mission. Either I deliver or I go. Prepare yourself for the endeavour. With effort and perseverance you will succeed'.

I have never seen or heard of a greater patriot in the modern world than Dr Kalam. His love and pride for India is boundless. He has travelled thousands and thousands of miles addressing the young to start dreaming and aim higher. His 'India can do it' spirit reinforces confidence and motivates us to transform India into a developed nation with a will to work hard and armed with technology, knowledge and love for our nation.

'I will keep the lamp of knowledge burning to achieve the vision - Developed India.'