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| Creating disease-free, prosperous society | | |
I am indeed delighted to participate in the award ceremony of the “Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development award for 2005”. I congratulate His Excellency, Mr Hamid Karzai, for receiving the “Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development” award for 2005.
His Excellency, Mr Hamid Karzai, is in the process of building modern Afghanistan and he has a unique mission of political development and economic development of Afghanistan.
India and Afghanistan have the unique distinction of sharing history and culture. I recall Mr President, your specialisation in political science at Himachal University in Shimla. The spirit of courage of His Excellency Mr Hamid Karzai, in providing the leadership at this critical time for re-building Afghanistan by bringing people together for a prosperous Afghanistan is important for many nations.
When I met His Excellency President Mr Hamid Karzai, he said now Afghanistan is on the march towards democracy and economic development, particularly the rural villages where 80 per cent of people live.
Definitely India and Afghanistan can further cooperate in empowering the villages in education and healthcare and creating more employment potential. In this direction of higher level of training and skill imparting training, India will definitely share the experiences with Afghanistan.
Mr President, I am sure you would have put forward your vision for Afghanistan’s economic prosperity, security, peace and happiness of the people during the Regional Economic Cooperation meeting. India is with you in your missions.
With the evolution of human being, many advances in science and technology have been made for progressively improving the quality of life. At the same time, from the origin until now, society has always been at war within and between groups and has generated two world wars. Recently, two more wars had also been triggered.
Presently, terrorism and low intensity warfare are affecting many parts of the world and insecurity prevails.
Today, with a global population of six billion, only three billion have access to limited or perhaps satisfactory supply of drinking water. It is estimated that 33 per cent of the world’s population has no access to sanitation and 17 per cent has no access to safe water.
But by 2025 the world population is going to rise to eight billion but only one billion will have sufficient water. Two billion, which is 25 per cent, will have no access to safe water. Five billion that is 62 per cent will have no access to sanitation. We should collectively find a solution for this problem.
The use of fossil fuels has caused enormous problems for the environment of planet earth resulting in abnormal changes in climatic conditions. This has resulted in researchers to look for clean energy sources such as hydel power plants, nuclear power plants, energy from renewable sources such as solar, wind and tidal. Also, in the transportation sector there is a need to progressively introduce the use of bio-diesel and ethanol.
In the health care sector, major diseases like HIV/AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis, malaria, other water borne diseases and coronary artery diseases have increased considerably. Man is fighting a war on all fronts - terrorism on one side, diseases and environmental degradation on the other and above all poverty in life. On the other hand man has created technologies which can bridge nations and minds - if mind-willing!
What I would like to discuss with you is the possibility of creating a near disease free, economically prosperous and peaceful society. In my opinion, this could be achieved through “Evolution of Enlightened Citizens” that has three dimension approach for evolving a happy, prosperous and peaceful society in our planet.
How do we create such an enlightened society? Hence, the evolution of enlightened society is possible by adopting three vital components, which are (a) Education with value system (b) Religion transforming into spirituality and (c) Economic development for societal transformation? More details on the global vision can be seen in my website www.presidentofindia.nic.in.
Let me now focus only on the economic development for societal transformation which transforms the developing nation into a developed nation. A world body has to give leadership in evolution of enlightened citizenship to the society.
In our country, we have a population of over one billion people of which 220 million have to be lifted up. Similar situation exists in many nations. They need education, they need habitat, they need health care, and creation of employment potential.
To meet their needs, in India we have the third vision of transforming India into a developed nation by the year 2020.
We have identified five areas where India has a core competence for integrated action: (1) agriculture and food processing (2) education and Healthcare (3) information and communication technology (4) self reliance in critical technologies and (5) infrastructure development such as power, transportation, and communication and including providing urban amenities in rural areas (PURA) which envisages sustained rural development through provision of physical connectivity, electronic connectivity, knowledge connectivity leading to economic connectivity of the rural villages. For India, we have planned 7000 PURAs clusters. This plan of action and experience, we can share with Afghanistan.
(Excerpts from the address at the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development given in Delhi on Nov 19)
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