"SHOUT, we will win and avoid despondency," Former President of India, Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam advised secondary school children on a visit to the Nation Agro Foundation (NAF) for rural development in Illedu, Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu.
Celebrating his 77th birthday with them after cutting his birthday cake, he told them, "Dream, dream, dream.... Dreams will transform into thoughts which will result in action and progress."
Interacting with them, Dr.Kalam explained, "Night and day are experienced through the interaction of sun and earth which man cannot control. But we can control the days and hours at our disposal. We must make each day productive and resolve to make it useful for ourselves and our country."
Later, while talking to farmers, self-help group members and primary agricultural cooperative bank employees, he asked them to use genetically modified seeds to improve agricultural productivity. He pointed out that farmers were not able to get remunerative prices in the market. Hence, they needed to adopt the cooperative approach in farming and marketing of agricultural produce. Farmers needed to pool their inputs, cultivation practices and technology so that they had a better clout while going to market to enable them to get a fair price.
Earlier, Dr.Kalam inspected the agricultural, cattle and social production at various villages in Kancheepuram district. These included the total sanitation and adult literacy programme at Puthirankottai, the watershed project at Kumili and farmers club at Manappakkam.
Currently, NAF has enabled drop-out school children of Classes X, XI and XII to educate about 4200 village members through the adult literacy pro9gramme. This enables them to read and write Tamil and read the newspapers. However, 10,000 are still left to be educated.
At Puthirankottai, every household has received government subsidy of Rs.1200 and a bank loan of Rs.2500 to build a toilet under the total sanitation programme of NAF.
The NAF was founded by C.Subramaniam, the architect of India's first Green Revolution.
Courtesy: The New Indian Express, Chennai, Oct.16, 2008.
Grateful thanks to ENS Economic Bureau and The New Indian Express.
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