I will ask you three questions. One, is providing urban amenities in rural areas an abstraction? No, it is not because it is the reality. India has 600,000 villages but few towns and cities. So if you go to my website, all the lectures will be about how to establish this and how it has been established by individuals. Number two, my website talks about the importance of primary education. Third, a nation that does not have a vision dies. My 2020 vision for India is to transform it into a developed nation. That cannot be abstract, it is a lifeline. That is what my website and my e-paper talk about.

•SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI: What was the reaction among senior leaders in the government, first in the NDA and later in the UPA, to your vision? Were they just polite or did they take you seriously?

First of all, I don’t have a Kalam vision. India 2020 is the national vision. As the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee announced ‘India Vision 2020’ in Parliament and then he announced it at the Red Fort on Independence Day. And he definitely meant it. Then, after Manmohan Singh took over, at a governors’ conference, he said the government would do everything to make ‘Vision India 2020’ a reality. No political system can survive without a vision for the nation.

•Shekhar Gupta: How did the political class respond to a technocrat President?

When I took over as President, I studied the Constitution and the more I studied it, the more I realised that it does not prevent the President of India from giving the nation a vision. So when I went and presented this vision in Parliament and in legislative assemblies, everyone welcomed it, irrespective of party affiliations. For example, my guru, Dr Vikram Sarabhai, had a vision. In 1970, there was no geo-synchronous satellite in orbit but there was an experimental satellite. He said India should build a satellite launch vehicle to put a communication satellite in orbit to connect that country and a remote sensing satellite to find out all the resources. Now, there are 11 communication satellites, nine remote sensing satellites and we can go to the moon too. Likewise, the green revolution happened because of two visionaries -- C. Subramanyam, the food minister then, and Swaminatham, the agriculturist. They said we must become self-reliant. Today we make 230 million tonnes of food. So, vision drives the nation.

... contd.