India's 'people's president' visits local youth in Bartlett
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam showed Sunday why he was considered the people's president of India.
Kalam, who served as his nation's leader from 2002-07, spoke before a youth conference titled “Today's Youth, Tomorrow's Leaders” at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Bartlett.
Wearing a Nehru-style coat beneath a mane of silver hair, Kalam invited those in attendance to reach him by email, engaged in dialogue with audience members and reminded one of the Rev. Jesse Jackson when he instilled his leadership principles through a call-and-response with the assembly, repeating phrases like “I am born with potential,” “I am born with ideas and dreams” and “I am born with greatness.”
Kalam's words were often inspirational.
“The world is ready to give up her secret if you all know how to knock. There is no limit to the power for the human mind,” he said.
He encouraged his young audience to dream but also urged them to accompany it with perseverance. He paid homage to the power of youth and its “ignited minds.”
“The ignited mind of the youth is the most powerful resource on the earth, above the earth and under the earth,” Kalam said.
If properly directed, he said, young minds can influence positive change in areas such as literacy and water conservation.
He outlined several qualities of a creative leader. At the top of his list was his belief that “The leader must have a vision.” He used an example from the United States, noting how President John F. Kennedy had a vision of man landing on the moon.
But he said vision alone is not sufficient.
“A leader must have a passion to transform the vision into action,” he said.
A leader must also know how to manage success and failure. As an example, he cited India's 1980 satellite launch, on which Kalam, an aeronautical engineer, served as project director.
By 1979, the satellite was ready to launch, and Kalam went to the control center for the takeoff. Four minutes before launch, a computer began to go through a list of items that needed to be checked and put the blast off on hold.
Told by experts that he had no need to worry, he bypassed the computer and launched the rocket. Although everything worked fine in the initial stage, a problem developed in the second stage, and the satellite wound up in the Bay of Bengal.
Going before the press, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Professor Satish Dhawan, took responsibility for the failure.
But when the mission succeeded a year later, Dhawan told Kalam to conduct the news conference.
Kalam said he learned an important lesson: When confronting failure, the leader of the organization took ownership of that failure. But when success came, he gave it to his team.
The story registered with Pooja Patel of Bartlett, a medical student at Midwestern University in Downers Grove.
“One thing that really hit home was when he talked about his failures and how he was able to overcome (them) and move on and learn from them,” he said.
Roshni Barot of Hoffman Estates, who attends Northwestern University, said hearing Kalam was “an amazing experience.”
“As an undergraduate biomedical engineer — and I'm doing my master's now in environmental engineering — I'm very much interested in working with world hunger and developing sanitary procedures in developing countries,” Barot said.
She said she is impressed with Kalam's dream of developing India and the rest of the world to live as one big family.
“That is a goal that I would like to achieve as well.”
Kalam believes in countries collaborating together to tackle problems. He earned the prestigious Hoover Medal in 2009. The honor recognizes engineers who make contributions to humanity.
In Kalam's case, he made quality and affordable health care more accessible in India and helped connect rural clinics to more modern medical centers in urban areas.
Staff writer Ashok Selvam contributed to this report.