Every October 15, classrooms across India fill with quizzes, speeches and posters. It is the birthday of the “People’s President”, celebrated as World Students’ Day.
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, born on 15 October 1931, was indeed a president unlike any other. He rose through the ranks, sold newspapers in his childhood and, through sheer grit and determination, went on to become the ‘Missile Man of India’ and then the country’s President.
The day is often described wrongly, so a correction belongs here. The day has not been declared by the United Nations, but it is celebrated in India as Students’ Day. No resolution created it. A grateful country did, because Kalam had earned it. Tamil Nadu goes further and observes the date as Youth Renaissance Day. Why students? Because Kalam never stopped being one, and never stopped being a teacher. As President from 2002 to 2007, he met students constantly, and he kept doing so after leaving office.
He returned to the classroom as a visiting professor at the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Indore and Shillong. On July 27, 2015, he collapsed while lecturing IIM Shillong students on creating a livable planet and died soon after, aged 83. He was teaching until his last hour. The nation’s debt to him is larger than the classroom.
As Project Director of SLV-III, India’s first satellite launch vehicle designed and produced at home, he helped put the Rohini satellite into orbit in July 1980 and bring India into the select circle of space-faring nations. At the DRDO, he led the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, which delivered Agni and Prithvi and earned him the name “Missile Man”.
He then played a central scientific and technical role in the Pokhran-II tests of May 1998, which made India a declared nuclear-weapon state. Every Indian who sleeps behind a credible deterrent owes him a quiet thank-you. The honours followed: the Padma Bhushan in 1981, the Padma Vibhushan in 1990 and the Bharat Ratna in 1997.
Yet his most lasting work may be the one that carried no title. Wings of Fire, published in 1999, gave millions of young Indians a story in which a modest background was no barrier to ambition. India 2020 gave them a target to build towards. His vision aimed at a developed India by 2020. That year has passed, and the work is unfinished. Kalam would have been the last person to call this an embarrassment.
He would have called it homework. So the best way to mark October 15, is not with garlands. It is with better questions in classrooms, better laboratories in universities and more students who believe, as he did, that a dream is a plan waiting for effort. India gave Kalam its highest civilian honour. The least it owes him in return is a generation that finishes what he started.