Turning Points (17 page)

Saturday and Sunday, 5 & 6 May

• Visit Chennai and Trichi and Karaikudi
  

Monday, 7 May

• Meeting with 30 students and teachers from Govt Sr Secondary School, Chattisgarh
  

Wednesday, 9 May

• Visit Sanskriti Group of Institutions to launch the ‘What can I give’ programme at Mathura
  
• Visit Pagal Bawa Ashram – an ashram for widows at Vrindavan
  

Friday, 11 May

• Inauguration of the Technology Day Celebrations of the Department of Science and Technology
  

Saturday, 12 May

• Visit Azamgarh, U.P. to inaugurate the Vedanta Hospital and address the students of Azamgarh
  

Tuesday, 15 May

• Inauguration of the International Year of Cooperatives 2012 of the National Cooperative Development Corporation
  

Thursday and Friday, 17-18 May

• Chief Guest at the Graduation Day celebrations of the CMR Institute of Technology
  
• Golden jubilee oration at the Defence Food Research Lab, Mysore
  
• Visit to All India Institute of Speech and Hearing
  
• Visit JSS University and address the students
  

Monday, 21 May

• Chief Guest at the First Convocation of the Teerthankar Mahavir University, Moradabad
  
• Visit Rampur and address the school students of Rampur district
  
• Visit C.L. Gupta Eye Institute and address the doctors/staff
  
• Visit the Moradabad Institute of Technology and address the students
  

Wednesday, 23 May

• Pan African e-Network address to the African Nations
  

Thursday, 24 May

• Visit Guwahati and address the Annual Convocation of the IIT Guwahati
  

Saturday, 26 May

• Address to Hindustan Times–Hindustan U.P. Development Conclave at Lucknow
  

As one can see from the diversity of the functions, each address has a different subject to tackle, and preparing the speeches is a task in itself.

The conclave at Lucknow on 26 May was held to generate ideas for the development of Uttar Pradesh. As usual I had spent some time preparing my presentation. I was happy to see that the points I made went down well with the experts gathered there and with the new chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav. At thirty-eight, he is the youngest chief minister in the country.

U.P. has the second largest economy in the nation and is
richly endowed in natural and human resources. With its 100 million youth, it is home to every fifth youth in the nation. My expert friends tell me that by 2016, out of every 100 skilled jobs being generated worldwide, about eight could come directly from this state alone.

My study of the economic profile of U.P. indicated that 73 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture and allied activities, and 46 per cent of the state income is generated from agriculture. During the 11th Plan period, the state has recorded 7.3 per cent GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product), exceeding the 6.1 per cent target. The state has over 2.3 million small-scale industrial units. Presently, there are over 2.5 million unemployed youth, of whom 0.9 million are over thirty-five years old.

Keeping these aspects in mind, my presentation considered ways to raise the per capita income from the current Rs 26,051 to more than Rs 100,000 through value-added employment generation, promote a literacy rate of 100 per cent, reduce the IMR (infant mortality rate) to less than ten and remove diseases like leprosy, kala azar, malaria, chikungunya, dengue and TB from the state.

I went on to illustrate how these goals could be accomplished to empower its 200 million people.

One of the suggestions was to make a skill map of U.P. This would mean mapping all the districts in the state with their core competencies in terms of skills across the fields of art, music, handicrafts, agro products and cuisine, among others, and then developing their potential in a focused way.

There were many other specific measures in the presentation. My wish is that dynamic plans for faster
development are implemented across the country to make the process interactive and result-oriented.

The 123 Agreement signed between the United States and India is known as the Indo-US nuclear deal. Under this agreement India agreed to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities and to place all its civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In exchange, the United States agreed to work towards
full
civil nuclear cooperation with India. After prolonged negotiations the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government had to face a trust vote on 22 July 2008 before signing the safeguards agreement with the IAEA.

The crucial element in this trust vote was the Left parties who were supporting the UPA government from outside. They refused to be a party to the agreement. The president of the Samajwadi Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and his senior aide Amar Singh were in two minds about the nuclear deal and whether they should extend their support. They were not sure whether the deal would be favourable to India or was being done purely on business considerations by the West, particularly the United States. To clarify the position both Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh desired to meet me at my residence at 10 Rajaji Marg and discuss the merits and demerits of India signing the deal. I told them that in the long run, India has to become self-reliant in thorium-based nuclear reactors. That means, we will have clean and abundant
energy for all our development tasks without any strings. The deal will help us to tide over the present shortages with respect to uranium.

One other important issue which came up is the agitation on continuing with nuclear power plants, especially the power plant under construction at Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu, after the tsunami devastation in Fukushima, Japan in March 2011. The agitators belonging to the local villages supported by national and international NGOs were demanding that the work in Koodankulam should immediately stop and they were preventing the engineers from proceeding with the work. Looking at the seriousness of the situation I carried out a detailed study of the safety systems of nuclear power plants in India and the desirability of going ahead with them and published an article in the English-language and regional newspapers explaining why this technology was so essential for the development needs of India.

Simultaneously, I visited Koodankulam with my team to review the 2,000 MW, third-generation-plus plant. I wanted to understand the plant’s safety features and how it was addressing the concerns of the people which had been highlighted in the aftermath of the Fukushima event. I spent the whole day there meeting scientists and experts and the local people and also studying the various facilities of the plant first-hand. I was heartened to note that it is equipped with the latest technologies when it comes to safety. There are four important aspects of safety in nuclear power plants: Structural integrity safety, thermal hydraulic safety, radiation safety and neutronic safety, and it met the requirements of all four.

Later, I suggested that there should be a special PURA complex adjoining the villages around the plant which would help with education, training facilities and enabling value-added employment for the local population.

I am happy to see that these measures are being implemented and the government has announced that 2 per cent of the profit generated by the power plant is to be allocated for social welfare, rural uplift and enhanced empowerment of the citizens of the Koodankulam region. The functioning of the plant would be part of meeting the goals of energy independence.

The last five years have given me an opportunity to meet millions of children, pursue academics and research in multiple universities both in India and abroad, be a teacher in societal transformation to a large number of management students and contribute my views on pressing national issues. Above all, I was able to catalyse the introduction of life-saving systems in over eight states through the Emergency Trauma Management Programme.

EPILOGUE

Oh! Parliamentarians, the sculptors of Mother India,
Lead us to light, enrich our lives.
Your honest toil is our guiding light,
If you work hard, we all can prosper.

I
n 2007, as I demitted office, I gave a speech to parliamentarians that I feel has great relevance to all that I have said in the foregoing pages, and gives some points that need to be kept in mind. India’s democratic experience as a free nation has been a phenomenal act of faith. When universal suffrage was adopted in 1951 there was no precedent anywhere in the world where millions of illiterate and property-less people were enfranchised overnight, with the hope that this would produce a quiet and steady social revolution, ensure to all its citizens the extensive list of rights promised to them under the Constitution; bring
about a greater sense of national unity; and ensure national security, well-being, and prosperity more than at any time in its history of centuries of crushing alien rule.

As a nation, we have made significant gains in our economic performance, especially in recent years, compared to the historical past. Our successes however are mixed in nature, because our performance on a range of human development and governance indicators has still a long way to go. A new vision and visionary leaders are needed to restore a national sense of missionary zeal to fight for our people, for, by doing so, we are fighting for the world.

Parliament is undoubtedly India’s premier institution, the very embodiment of representative democracy. Parliamentary democracy as a process of governance and a system of national politics has shown great purpose in loosening the historical power structures of Indian society, in sustaining free institutions, and in widening the scope of democratic participation. However, there is little doubt that, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Parliament as an institution faces greater challenges than ever before since its creation in 1951, especially on matters related to human development and governance.

But what we have to see very clearly is that the effectiveness of Parliament as an institutional instrument of governance, and its capacity to deliberate, produce legislation and provide visionary leadership to the government and the nation, is increasingly dependent upon the functioning of a multiplicity of political parties, their capacities and calculations,
rather than Parliament itself as an institution
. That is the main reason why I consider it important to share with you the challenges
facing the nation, including Parliament as an institution, and suggest ways forward to make India a developed nation by 2020.

There is a general feeling and appreciation that the environment internal and external to India’s system of governance has gone through rapid and apparently irreversible change, especially over the last two decades. The challenges posed to national sovereignty, integrity and economic growth posed by these environmental changes need to be addressed coherently and rapidly. With the passage of time, along with increase in size and complexity, social organizations tend to deteriorate and become crisis prone. As a social entity, India’s system of governance appears to have entered a stage of crisis, and this is a clarion call for self-renewal and change.

India is fortunate in having leaders of high ability, competence and vision in government and Parliament. It can also be rightly proud of its multifarious achievements in economic, social and political fields since Independence. Many predict that by 2050, India will become one of the dominant economies of the world. But neither democracy nor economic resurgence can be taken for granted. Constant vigilance is the price of liberty. It is important that democratic processes and functioning, however satisfactory they may appear to be on the surface, cannot be, and should not be, frozen in time. We cannot rest content with past achievements, and ignore recent developments that call for a change in the way we run our society and nation. Economic renewal and positive growth impulses after liberalization are occurring largely outside the governmental and public
sectors, and the greatest challenge before us is to re-energize and give a new charter of life to our public institutions.