There are many Everests in the life of man.
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves” .

I am indeed delighted to be here in the Hindustan College of Science and Technology (HCST), Mathura and interact with the Students and Faculty members of all the institutions participating in the 8th Annual National Festival of Techno Culture Symposium “Gyanjyot 2008”. I am happy that youth empowered by HCST over the last eight years have been working in Uttar Pradesh and different parts of the country. My greetings to all the Students, Faculty Members, Staff and alumni of HCST. In the years to come, I am confident that this College will generate a large number of societal transformers and entrepreneurs with the objective of promoting economic development and prosperity in the Mathura district and other places in the country. Now I would like to discuss on the topic “Knowledge makes you great” .

While I am with you, I would like to talk about knowledge. Knowledge has four components, creativity, righteousness, courage and indomitable spirit. That the combination of these characteristics can generate enlightened citizens. Let us look at the first component Creativity :

“Learning gives creativity
Creativity leads to thinking
Thinking provides knowledge
Knowledge makes you great”

The next component of knowledge is righteousness. The power of Righteousness is described in a divine hymn, which is as follows:

"Where there is righteousness in the heart
There is beauty in the character.
When there is beauty in the character,
There is harmony in the home.
When there is harmony in the home.
There is order in the nation.
When there is order in the nation,
There is peace in the world."

The third component is Courage , which is defined as follows:

"Courage to think different,
Courage to invent,
Courage to travel into an unexplored path,
Courage to discover the impossible,
Courage to combat the problems
And Succeed, are the unique qualities of the youth.

As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all the missions."

The fourth component is Indomitable Spirit.

Indomitable Spirit

I would like to recall a great clarion call of indomitable spirit, which was given by Sir C V Raman, at the age of 82. The message is still reverberating in my mind: “I would like to tell the young men and women before me not to lose hope and courage. Success can only come to you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you. I can assert without fear of contradiction that the quality of the Indian mind is equal to the quality of any Teutonic, Nordic or Anglo-Saxon mind. What we lack is perhaps courage, what we lack is perhaps driving force, which takes one anywhere. We have, I think, developed an inferiority complex. I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit. We need a spirit of victory, a spirit that will carry us to our rightful place under the sun, a spirit, which will recognize that we, as inheritors of a proud civilization, are entitled to a rightful place on this planet. If that indomitable spirit were to arise, nothing can hold us from achieving our rightful destiny." Hence friends, now you realize, knowledge is equal to the equation: Knowledge = creativity + righteousness+ Courage+ indomitable spirit. Now the teachers and educators may like to see how real knowledge can be imparted to the students.

Let me now talk to you about two great minds having special traits in acquisition of right knowledge that led them to great heights. Let us go into details.

Birth of Creativity in a difficult situation

Mario Capecchi had a difficult and challenging childhood. For nearly four years, Capecchi lived with his mother in a chalet in the Italian Alps. When World War II broke out, his mother, along with other Bohemians, was sent to Dachau as a political prisoner. Anticipating her arrest by the Gestapo, she had sold all her possessions and given the money to friends to help raise her son on their farm. In the farm, he had to grow own wheat, harvest, take it to miller to be ground. From the flour, he made bread dough, which he took to the baker to be baked. He also remembers helping to make wine. Then, the money which his mother left for him ran out. He began four years of wandering. He was four and a half years old.

He headed south, sometimes living in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless children, sometimes living in orphanages and most of the time hungry. He spent the last year in the city of Reggio Emelia , hospitalized for malnutrition that would never be cured, since he, like the other children, was given only one cup of coffee and a small crust of bread every day. He wanted desperately to escape. Scores of beds lined the rooms and corridors of the hospital, one bed touching the next. No sheets, no blankets. That was where his mother found him on his ninth birthday after a year of searching. Within weeks, the Capecchi and his mother sailed to America to join his uncle and aunt. His mother had a psychological set back due to her life in prison and her subsequent search for Capecchi. The day after he arrived, his uncle and aunt sent him to the third grade, although he'd never before been to school. Nor did he speak English. The teachers allowed him to play with paints and make murals, enabling him to learn socialization and the language.

Capecchi became very active in sports, playing on four varsity teams: football, baseball, soccer and wrestling, where he was team captain. Capecchi says that sports are important from a psychological point of view which enables you to learn about human psychology, things that you later transfer to relationships: perseverance, pushing yourself beyond certain limits. The sense of social responsibility permeating the atmosphere at school also influenced him. There was a cognizance of world problems. It wasn't taught, but it was felt that one should do something to make this a better world. This led Capecchi to take up the study of political science. But after one political science class, Capecchi found there wasn't anything to bite on. There was little science in politics. He switched to science and math, graduating in 1961 with a double major in Physics and Chemistry.

Capecchi never took a Biology class; he learned about biology in the labs. For his practical experience, he worked several terms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Once, he worked with Charles Pop Kettering, a very curious man who dismantled an experimental machine Capecchi had worked three months to construct. Incredulous, Capecchi watched, later admitting that it was fun watching Kettering and his excitement at seeing how it worked. Although he really liked Physics its elegance and simplicity, Capecchi realized from his lab experience that everything we learned [in Physics] was only up to the 1920s. It was still classical education. Physics lacked the excitement in his time that Capecchi sensed in a new science being developed: molecular biology. He knew he would switch to molecular biology in graduate school, on the advice of James D Watson. Watson taught him that he should not be bothered about small things, since such pursuits are likely to produce only small answers.

After earning his doctorate in biophysics in 1967, Capecchi was a junior fellow at Harvard for two years. The next four years, he spent on the Biochemistry faculty at the Harvard School of Medicine, but realized that science was losing something. While in search for new topics, Capecchi found University of Utah in Salt Lake City to provide the right atmosphere to work on projects whose outcome may take 10 years. The main strength of Capecchi was his focus in science. He also wanted to know where his work fits in.

From then on, his objective was to do gene targeting. The experiments started in 1980, despite NIH's refusal to fund the work. By 1984, Capecchi had clear success. Three years later, he applied the technology to mice. In 1989, he developed the first mice with targeted mutations. The technology created by Doctor Capecchi allows researchers to create specific gene mutations anywhere they choose in the genetic code of a mouse which was considered not worthy of pursuit by National Institute of Health. It may seem like science fiction, but by manipulating gene sequences in this way, researchers are able to mimic human disease conditions on animal subjects. What the research of Mario Capecchi means for human health is nothing short of amazing, his work with mice could lead to cures for Alzheimeras disease or even Cancer. The innovations in genetics that Mario Capecchi achieved won him the Nobel Prize. You see young friends, how Capecchi defeated the problem and succeeded eventually in getting the Nobel prize?

A genius well ahead of time

Ramanujan, born and raised in Erode, Tamil Nadu, first encountered formal mathematics at the age of ten. He demonstrated a natural ability at mathematics, and was given books on advanced trigonometry by S. L. Loney. He mastered this book by age thirteen, and even discovered theorems of his own. He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning many awards. By the age of seventeen, Ramanujan was conducting his own mathematical research on Bernoulli numbers and the Euler–Mascheroni constant. He received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam. He failed his non-mathematical coursework, and lost his scholarship. Srinivasa Ramanujan lived only for 33 years and did not have formal higher education or means of living. Yet, his inexhaustible spirit and love for his subject made him contribute to the treasure houses of mathematical research – some of which are still under serious study and engaging all-available world mathematicians' efforts to establish formal proofs. Ramanujan was a unique Indian genius who could melt the heart of the most hardened and outstanding Cambridge mathematician Prof G H Hardy. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that it was Prof. Hardy who discovered Ramanujan for the world. Professor Hardy rated various geniuses on a scale of 100. While most of the mathematicians got a rating of around 30 with rare exceptions reaching to 60, Ramanujan got a rating of 100. There cannot be any better tribute to either Ramanujan or to Indian heritage. His works cover vast areas including Prime Numbers, Hyper geometric Series, Modular Functions, Elliptic Functions, Mock Theta Functions, even magic squares, apart from serious side works on geometry of ellipses, squaring the circle etc. One of the tributes to Ramanujan says that, ‘every Integer is a personal friend of Ramanujan'.

Ramanujan used to say “An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God” . For him the understanding of numbers was a process of spiritual revelation and connection. In his investigations into pure mathematics, he drew extraordinary conclusions that mystified his colleagues, but were usually proven, eventually, to be right. He opened a universe of theory that still today is reaping applications. The landscape of the infinite was to Ramanujan a reality of both mathematics and spirit. His love for numbers led Ramanujan to number theory. So friends you saw, how great creative minds, gave problem to the problem to succeed through the instrument of knowledge.

Mission for Hindustan College of Science and Technology

The students and faculty members of HCST as a part of their project work can study the socio economic characteristics of people living in the cluster of villages around the college such as education level of family members, availability of pucca houses, availability of safe drinking water, good sanitation facilities, infant mortality rate, maternal mortality rate, life expectancy, opportunity and availability of productive non-farm jobs in rural settings. In addition, they may also take up study of issues such as crime in the village, male and female ratio of the population, respect to women, status of special ability children for getting an inclusive picture about society as a whole.

With this experience, I would recommend the under graduate and post-graduate students in management, engineering and computer applications as an interdisciplinary team to take up study for the implementation of PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) as a business proposition in the entire Mathura district. The college can assign a three month project work for a group of five students to come up with a detailed project report and implementation plan for about 20 PURA complexes around Mathura and Agra in consultation with their respective State Government and District Authorities. There are number of operational PURA's in the country such as Periyar PURA in Vallam, Tamil Nadu, Byrraju PURA in Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, Loni PURA in Maharastra, Chitrakoot PURA in Madhya Pradesh and Sakthi PURA in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu. Details of PURA mission, I have discussed in my talk given to London School of Economic Asia Forum on 7 December 2006 at New Delhi . (the entire talk is available in my website www.abdulkalam.com )

Now let me talk about importance of research in our educational system.

Research – teaching – Research

Good teaching emanates from Research. The teachers' love for research and their experience in research are vital for the growth of any institution. Any Institutions is judged by the level and extent of the research work it accomplishes. This sets in a regenerative cycle of excellence. Experience of research leads to quality teaching and quality teaching imparted to the young in turn enriches research. I am sure the faculty members of HCST are involved in research in their own areas of specialization. I would suggest the HCST to undertake interdisciplinary research in execution of PURA complexes in the region, promotion of tourism industry in Uttar Pradesh and preservation and upliftment of heritage sites in Uttar Pradesh.

Conclusion

In the years to come, India has to graduate from industrial economy to knowledge economy with emphasis on empowerment of the people besides providing basic needs for all-round development. The education system has to be creative, interactive, self-learning and informal with focus on values, merit and quality instead of being text book based teaching. The workers have to be flexibly skilled, knowledgeable and self-empowered instead of being merely categorized as skilled or semi-skilled. The type of work will be less structured and software driven instead of being structured and hardware driven. Management style will be through more delegation instead of being directive. The quality of personnel will be knowledge based besides addressing enhanced performance. Impact on environment and energy will be strikingly less compared to being heavy. Keeping these characteristics in mind, this Hindustan College may like to work towards generation of human resource for meeting the needs of knowledge economy through suitable modification to its teaching methods, the application of technology, enhancing the connectivity among multiple institutions and creating a research orientation.

I find that the quality of education in our rural schools needs improvement. Hindustan College with three thousand students and 150 faculty members can adopt at least 15 secondary/senior secondary schools in the region and enhance the quality of education in those schools for effectively bridging the rural urban divide in knowledge acquisition.

My best wishes to all the members of Hindustan College of Science and Technology for success in their mission of developing quality human resource needed for transforming India into a developed nation before 2020.

Dear friends, let me administer a seven point oath.

1. Wherever I am, a thought will always come to my mind. That is “What can I give?”
2. Whatever the mission I will do, my motto will be “Work with integrity and succeed with integrity”
3. I will always remember that “Let not my winged days, be spent in vain”.
4. I realize I have to set a great goal that will lead me to think high, work and realize the goal.
5. My greatest friends will be great human beings, great teachers and great books.
6. I firmly believe that no problem can defeat me; I will become the captain of the problem, defeat the problem and succeed.
7. My National Flag flies in my heart and I will bring glory to my nation.

May God Bless you all.

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam,
15.03.2008