For his contributions to the advancement of launch vehicle and ballistic missile technology, Missile Man of India is recognized. In addition, he was a key player in the technical, organizational, and political aspects of India's 1998 Pokhran-II nuclear tests, the country's first since its 1974 initial nuclear test.
With the backing of the then-opposition Indian National Congress as well as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Kalam became the 11th president of India in 2002. Known as the "People's President" to most,[6] he served one term before going back to his civilian life of teaching, writing, and public service. Several distinguished honors were bestowed upon him, including India's highest civilian honor, the Bharat Ratna.
At the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, Kalam, then 83 years old, fell and died on July 27, 2015, seemingly following a heart arrest. Thousands, including dignitaries from throughout the country, turned out for his funeral in his hometown of Rameswaram, where he was laid to rest with full state honors.
Childhood and schooling
On October 15, 1931, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born into a Tamil Muslim family in the Madras Presidency, which later became the State of Tamil Nadu, at the pilgrimage site of Rameswaram on Pamban Island. His mother Ashiamma was a homemaker, and his father Jainulabdeen Marakayar owned a boat and served as the imam of a nearby mosque.His father ran a boat service that transported Hindu pilgrims between Rameswaram to the now-deserted Dhanushkodi.
In his family, Kalam was the youngest of four brothers and one sister. Rich Marakayar tradesmen and landowners with multiple properties and vast areas of land had been his forefathers. The Marakayar are a Muslim ethnic minority that lives along the coasts of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. They identify as descended from Arab traders and local women. In addition to transporting pilgrims between the mainland and Pamban, the family company involved trading groceries between the island and the mainland as well as to and from Sri Lanka.But after the Pamban Bridge connecting the island to the mainland opened in 1914, the family's companies collapsed, and by the 1920s, all of their assets aside from the ancestral home had been lost. By the time Kalam was born, the family was deeply impoverished. He had to sell newspapers as a young child to supplement the minimal cash his family had.
Although Kalam's academic record was ordinary, he was seen as a bright, diligent student with a great drive to learn. He studied for hours, particularly in mathematics. Kalam attended Schwartz Higher Secondary School in Ramanathapuram before continuing his education at St. Joseph's College in Tiruchirappalli, where he earned his physics degree in 1954.
In order to attend Madras Institute of Technology to study aerospace engineering, Kalam relocated to Madras in 1955. The Dean was not happy with Kalam's lack of progress on a senior class assignment, so he threatened to withdraw his scholarship if the project wasn't completed in the following three days. Having impressed the Dean with his meeting of the deadline, Kalam was subsequently told,I was putting you under stress and asking you to meet a difficult deadline. He finished tenth in qualifying, just shy of realizing his aim of becoming a fighter pilot.
A career in science
Following his graduation from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1960, Kalam became a member of the Defence Research & Development Service DRDS and joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the Defence Research and Development Organisation Press Information Bureau, Government of India. He began his career developing a small hovercraft, but his decision to work at DRDO did not convince him. Kalam joined INCOSPAR and began working under famed space scientist Vikram Sarabhai.H. G. S. Murthy, the first Director of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station TERLS, had an interview with him and recruited him to the ISRO. 1969 saw
After being moved to the Indian Space Research Organization ISRO, Kalam assumed the role of project director for the country's first Satellite Launch Vehicle SLV-III, which effectively launched the Rohini satellite into near-Earth orbit in July 1980. In 1965, Kalam had begun working independently at DRDO on an expandable rocket project. With the government's blessing, Kalam enlarged the program to involve additional engineers in 1969.
He visited the NASA facilities at Wallops Flight Facility, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in 1963 and 1964. Kalam worked on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV and SLV-III projects throughout the 1970s and 1990s, and both of them were successful.
Kalam succeeded K. R. Narayanan as the 11th President of India. With 922,884 electoral votes, he won the 2002 presidential election, more than Lakshmi Sahgal's 107,366 votes. His tenure was from July 25, 2002, to July 25, 2007.
The National Democratic Alliance NDA, which was in power on June 10, 2002, announced that they would nominate Kalam for the position of president, and the Nationalist Congress Party and the Samajwadi Party supported his candidacy. Following the announcement of the Samajwadi Party's endorsement of Kalam, Narayanan opted not to run for reelection, so clearing the field. Regarding the declaration of his candidacy, Kalam stated.
Along with senior Cabinet members Vajpayee and Kalam, he filed his nomination papers in the Indian Parliament on June 18.
During his presidency, Kalam served alongside Manmohan Singh and Vladimir Putin.
The media declared that the election was biased and that Kalam would win without a doubt when polling for the president started on July 15, 2002, in both Parliament and state assemblies. The count took place on July 18. With an easy win, Kalam became the 11th president of the Republic of India. On July 25, he took office and moved into Rashtrapati Bhavan. Kalam was the third Indian President to receive the Bharat Ratna award.
Prior to becoming President of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 1954 and Zakir Husain 1963 were the previous winners of Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian distinction.at addition, he was the first bachelor and scientist to live at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
At the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, Kalam gave a speech titled "Creating a Livable Planet Earth" on July 27, 2015. He had some discomfort going up the steps, but after taking a quick break, he was able to enter the auditorium. He passed out five minutes into his talk, at approximately 6:35 p.m. IST. He had no pulse or other indications of life when he was taken to the adjacent Bethany Hospital in a severe condition. At 7:45 p.m. IST, Kalam suffered a sudden heart arrest and was pronounced dead even though he was admitted to the intensive care unit. To his assistant Srijan Pal Singh, his final words are said to have been, "Funny guy! How are you doing ?
The DRDO constructed the Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam National Memorial[118] in Pei Karumbu, the island settlement of Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, in honor of Kalam. Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave it his official opening in July 2017. The models of the rockets and missiles that Kalam had experience with are on show. In addition to hundreds of portraits that portray the life of the mass leader, there are acrylic paintings about his life on exhibit. In the entrance is a statue of Kalam performing on the Veena. Two other smaller statues depicting the leader in both sitting and standing positions exist.
You must be logged in to post a comment.