It is striking the degree to which every one of Kalam’s speeches always contains a practical idea. The message invariably was: there is always something practical you can do to solve your problems. His addresses to state assemblies round the country always had a list of things to do: build a university here, promote PURA, do this for water, do that for energy. The worth of these ideas is not important. What is important is that, by putting them out, Kalam was able to define the agenda. In three states I personally have had the experience of legislators prefacing their remarks by reference to a “Kalam” solution. Indeed the essence of good politics is to define the agenda, and to replace a sense of negativity with a sense that something can be done. Kalam did that in good measure. Here was a politician, as it were, telling everyone what they could do for themselves. The proposals may appear crazy, but the underlying sensibility was not. We have politicians and policy-makers divided into two camps: those who claim to speak for Shining India and those who claim to speak for India Left Behind. It was Kalam’s remarkable feat to be able to speak for both.

There will be reams written about the Kalam presidency and the creation of brand Kalam. The truth that the idea of brand Kalam captures is the fact that close scrutiny of his qualities is neither here nor there. But it is politicians who most need to learn from his conduct. Kalam was engaging in politics in the deeper sense of the term: he had an unerring instinct for what the people were looking for, he never criticised but only proposed alternatives, he levelled distinctions between people not by lowering the elite but by raising the aspirations of masses, and he relentlessly called attention to the fact that the Office was a means not an end. It is always possible to probe further into his motives and compromises. But he succeeded not because he was apolitical but because he had a sense of what people want in a politician: the capacity to project a future full of possibilities with conviction and sincerity.

... contd.