FDI in retail will be good if it benefits farmers: Dr A P J Kalam

Former president Dr A P J Abdul Kalam today said FDI in retail would be good if it benefitted lakhs of farmers in the country.

Replying to a question during an interaction with students of a private college here, he said Indian economy was dependant on three major sectors -- agriculture, industries and services.

While industries and services were doing well, barring the two years of recession in USA and EU, the agriculture sector had not shown that improvement and the country had to protect nearly 600 million farmers, he said.

"To uplift the farmers, we have a task to teach them about value addition and marketing and if any Foreign Collaboration will help the farmers, then FDI is good, otherwise we have to think of (it)," Kalam said.

To another question, Kalam said he was working on a project to find out the possibility of tapping solar power from space.

"Since we are getting solar light for eight to 10 hours and tap limited energey, by placing some energy packages in space, we could tap solar power from the space and bring down to convert it into electricity," he said.

Later talking to reporters, Kalam said this was a major project and it would take some time.

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