“Though I have envisioned India to become a superpower by 2020, the attitude and the confidence of the youth, to conquer everything in the right spirit, would make the country a global leader and super power within five years,” the by-then former president said with an admirable sense of self-belief. In 2008, a decade after his book was published, Kalam brought forward India’s rendezvous date with superpowerdom to 2012. This praise, it seems, had the unfortunate effect of encouraging Kalam to make his targets even more astonishing. While making their freewheeling predictions, Kalam and Rajan it seems simply forgot about the deep-rooted strength of Indian patriarchy. When it comes to leaving home and joining the workforce, Indian women are the most disadvantaged in South Asia. Only eight countries across the world have a lower female participation rate than India’s. And far from more women entering the workforce, in reality since then, India’s female labour force participation rate has fallen to a historic low in 2017-18. Not only is it apparent that 12 years on from 2008, poverty in India has not been eliminated, it seems astounding that such a time frame was fixed at all. Kalam and Rajan, for example, assume that there is a “greater likelihood of more women taking part in direct economic activities” and-most incredibly-that “there are good chances that poverty can be fully eliminated by 2007/8.” In many ways, the book’s style is a long-form precursor to the millions of patriotic WhatsApp messages that would flood smartphones two decades later.
Much of the book is a meandering set of wildly optimistic forecasts, powered more by an impressionable sense of patriotism than any relevant data. It is a mission we can we can all take up and accomplish.” It need not even be a mere aspiration in the minds of many Indians. The book had a simple message: “A developed India, by 2020 or even earlier is not a dream.
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