My Journey Transforming Dream

AVUL PAKIR JAINULABDEEN ABDUL KALAM was the eleventh President of India, from 2002 to 2007. He was a recipient of the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan and the nation's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. Born in 1931 in Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, Dr Kalam studied aeronautical engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology. He played a key role in the development of India's first satellite launch vehicle, the SLV-3; in the building and operationalization of India's strategic missile systems; and in the 1998 nuclear tests. As an elder statesman, he was in the public eye for his role in offering counsel, reaching out to people and building bridges across religious and social divides. Dr Kalam's focus was ever on transforming India into a developed nation by 2020 and to this end he continued to travel across the country for his teaching assignments at IITs and IIMs, to address conferences and to meet students and people from all walks of life. He passed away at one such lecture he had gone to deliver at Shillong on 27 July 2015. His message and influence continues to resonate with people across the country, and in all walks of life. SRIJAN PAL SINGH is a gold medallist MBA holder from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and has worked with the Boston Consulting Group. He is a social entrepreneur who has been involved in studying and evolving sustainable development systems with a thrust on rural areas. From 2009-15, he also worked as an advisor and officer on special duty to Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on promoting the concepts of energy independence and Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA), and co-authored with him two books: Target 3 Billion (2011) and Reignited (2015). He was named as one of the Global Leaders of Tomorrow by the St Gallen Leadership Symposium in Switzerland in 2014. He has also co-authored Smart and Human (2015) with G.R.K. Reddy.