India – How important is this five letter word for you which start with the letter ‘I’? For our Ex – President Abdul Kalam, it means the world. In this unique book which talks relentlessly about India, all his emotions for the nation are flowing unabated. If a reader is interested in taking a plunge into issues in our country and the bottlenecks in the way of growth and development, this book is just unputdownable. It took me just four odd days with an average of an hour each day to run through this book. The book is a blend of personal life experiences of President and the image of our nation through the minds of common man.

We are a nation of one billion plus people flushed with natural and human resources.The only thing which is keeping us devoid of the ‘developed nation’ status is spirit. As already said in his other book ‘Ignited minds’, he reiterates that the youths of India should shoulder the responsibility to make our economy resilient and self reliant. We have all the ingredients for making it great and buoyant but the most important thing – ‘spirit’, which adds more taste and gives a perfect shape, is missing. The youths of India should wake up to this emergency call and realize their responsibility as they comprise of more than half the population (~540 million) and if they take it upon them to speed up the radar, there can be no stopping to India.

Throughout the book, Missile man has emphasized on spirit and focused on many burning issues like education, poverty, infrastructure, self reliance and defense. Around 350 million people in our country are illiterate and if each one of us takes this oath to impart basic knowledge to at least one person in our entire life, sooner or later the illiteracy percentage will become negligible. In a nation of one billion plus people, more than 260 million reside below the poverty line and if, literacy rate can be improved, this issue will be automatically resolved. Furthermore, he has also given due importance to gender discrimination which is very much prevalent in our country despite the fact that 48% of our population comprises of fairer sex. The author has also paid impetus on creating awareness among youths for literature and our culture which is perishing with time. I completely endorse the views of Kalam as the present day younger generation is moving towards west at a great pace and time is not far when it would become difficult to find any remnants of our culture and tradition.

The title of the book goes on to speak that what India needs is spirit. We have all the resources to unfurl ourselves as a developed nation. The only thing which is missing is ‘indomitable spirit’. There are various instances and life time experiences shared by the author which he had while interaction with school kids which goes on to state that younger generation is keen to see a new self reliant and growing India. It is not that we have not made any progress in this area but we need to further rev up. The youths have in them to think out of the box and they can make it great for our nation. No nation is great; it is the people of the nation which makes it great.

The book is an immense source of inspiration and it can send your adrenaline rushing. I reiterate that ‘unputdownable’ is the right phrase for the book. If I had to take one line from the book, it would be – “For those who do ill to you, the best punishment is returning good to them.” – Thirukkural.

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