The twin messages on the Independence Day, respectively from President A P J Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, have in them core ideas on core issues and core values that have got marginalized in the rough and tumble of every day living and every day politics since the nation c attained Freedom 57 years ago. A whole new generation has been born in independent India uninfluenced by the pains of the foreign yoke and the birth-pangs of a new nation in the post-War global situation. There was thus a need as well to re-instill in this post-Independence generation, the core values that have made India work, and also to reassure them that their hopes and aspirations, both for the self and the nation, had not been lost, after all. The twin messages thus served more than a single purpose.
It is not always that nations with twin-leaderships as in India have a Head of State and a Head of Government who have had hands-on-experience in governance at a very high level. It is also the first time that we have a technocrat for President, and an economist for Prime Minister. In Abdul Kalam and Manmohan Singh, we have two career professionals who have charted a new course for the nation in their respective fields at the highest levels. Unlike the politicians of the past, they know what they are talking about - and know how to make their dreams work at the ground-level.
As coincidence would have it, the personal lives of the President and the Prime Minister, in their own way, are a rags-to-riches success story, which is inspiring - and thus, worthy of emulation. It has also revived hopes that professionals need not be averse to entering politics, leaving it all to professional politicians - and, then complaining about what is wrong, from the sidelines. It was the presence of successful professionals at various levels that lent leadership to the freedom movement. It was their moral authority flowing from financial independence that made politics of their days different.
The late Rajiv Gandhi tried inducting professionals into politics, but the result was a mixed-bag. His chosen men invariably came from the upper strata. In comparison, in Abdul Kalam and Manmohan Singh, we have professionals who have great personal achievements and contributions - and limited personal ambitions. It is this combination that has worked, and promises to work in others too. Here are two men on whom greatness has been thrust upon - only because they would want none of it, as long as they had their political space to work on their ideas.
It is this that has made the difference between circa 1947 and 2004. Jawaharlal Nehru's 'stroke-of-the-midnight-hour' speech would still echo in our ears. His call for redeeming the 'pledge not in full measure, but substantially' did sound pragmatic than dreamy. Yet, looking back, it was still a dream of a visionary, who wanted to give everything to every one in his just-born nation. He had promises to make, and 'promises to keep', as well.
Against this, Manmohan Singh has spoken only of 'promises to keep', in his maiden Independence Day address. These are the promises that the nation has made itself since Independence. Fifty-seven years may not be a long period in a nation's history, but it is enough time for stock-taking. Thus, what President Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh outlined are not only promises for the future, but also promises from our collective past that continue to remain un-addressed in a full measure till date.
Theirs are also promises born out of experience - both of the nation and of the individual. They are ideas born out of the experience and exposure that the earlier generation naturally lacked for no fault of theirs. It is the recipe for making dreams work - that is, if we are serious about making our dreams for the nation work. Kalam and Manmohan Singh are at the right place at the right time for doing the right job - re-motivate and re-energise a nation that was floundering on ideas of integration and industriousness.
They did not ask to be there, nor did they work for it. The Kalam-Manmohan duo may not be there all the time, just as Gandhi and Nehru could not have been there, to induce a sense of morality and modernity to our public life and policy-making, respectively. But their ideas would still remain. Whether to retain them just as ideas, as we have done with the 'Gandhian probity' and the 'Nehruvian dreams', is for us to decide as a nation. We have failed ourselves and the nation enough in the past, but the excuse of going through the 'learning process' will not be available to us this time round. Anyway, Time does not care for excuses. It rewards only successes.
* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.
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