The Hindu : National : President outlines roadmap for mission to eradicate poverty

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Sunday, Aug 01, 2004

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National

President outlines roadmap for mission to eradicate poverty

By Our Special Correspondent

MUMBAI, JULY 31 . The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, laid out today the roadmap for fulfilling the national mission of making India a developed country and meeting the major challenge of uplifting 260 million people above the poverty line, at a seminar here on "Indian Aviation on Global Horizon" which, interestingly, he did not attend.

Mr. Kalam addressed the aviators, aeronautical engineers, airline executives and tourism promoters through videoconferencing from New Delhi and answered questions.

He set aside his formal speech and just chatted out anecdotes and experiences he had gathered as aeronautics and defence science specialist over many decades — all with a teacher's ease and paternal authority.

The seminar was hosted by Air India as part of the birth centenary celebrations of J.R.D. Tata, pioneer of the Indian civil aviation.

`Creative leaders needed'

India can become economically strong through global competitiveness, knowledge power and technology achieved through constant endeavour to improve employee productivity and loyalty through participative management, employees' satisfaction and a good working environment, he said.

"In the new integrated management structure we need creative leaders whose leadership styles move from commander to coach, manager to mentor, director to delegator and from one who demands respect to one who facilitates self-respect," Mr. Kalam said.

The competitiveness, the President said, has three dimensions: quality of the product, cost effectiveness and supply in time. In this world made of the developed and developing countries, the former had to market their products in a competitive way to remain developed countries and the latter had to do the same to get transformed into developed ones.

"Indeed, these dynamics of competitiveness determine the law of development and we have to see our integrated missions for national development with the competitiveness index in mind," he said.

Need for big growth

He linked the mission to the aviation industry. In the country with one billion people when it is attempting to become a developed nation there will be need for growth in the aviation industry in a big way, he said. There would also be substantial business in the Asian region too and to capture this growing market, India would have to act now in development and production of medium-size passenger aircraft, establish industry for manufacturing spare parts, found maintenance industry and training institutions, he said.

He called for a resolution to launch six aerospace missions including the mission of making the airlines of the country competitive; design, develop, produce and market 150-200 seat passenger jets, establish an industry consortium for manufacturing parts, set up world-class aircraft maintenance base, state-of-the art aeronautics training centres for pilots, navigators and engineers.

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