The Kalam style of foreseeing the future

BACK in 1994, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, then PM’s Scientific Adviser and the DRDO Secretary, visited Army War College, Mhow. His interactive session was meant for senior officers of the three services who were attending the combined operational review evaluation programme.

As the Colonel General Staff at the college, I was appointed his liaison officer. The first direction I received for his night stay was to keep a blackboard and chalk in his guest room. Next morning, when I arrived there to escort him, I spotted images of missiles with complex formulae. The topic of his lecture was military capability, mainly the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme. Key missiles developed under this programme included Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag.

As he entered the hall where the participants were seated, he saw the Army’s olive green, the Air Force’s sky blue and the Navy’s white. He stopped short of the dais and said, “When you mix green, sky blue and white, you get purple — and future wars will be won with this purple approach.” It is happening today.

The opening sentence of his talk was that a powerful country must encompass economic strength, military capability and credible proven deterrence, coupled with political will. He was asked whether the missile development programme catered to nuclear warheads also. Dr Kalam replied that when you made such weapons, they were not meant to pluck roses.

When asked whether he believed that India could become a self-reliant nation, he quipped that he himself was ‘Made in India’ as he had never studied in any foreign university.

On future warfare, the ‘Missile Man’ — who served as India’s President from 2002 to 2007 — said the initial phase of these wars would be kinetic and abstract, and precision strikes would provide the winning edge.

Amid a pause to have a sip of water, he said nations would fight for water too. He mentioned that mismanagement of water must be resolved by interlinking rivers; I wondered whether he had in mind the Indus Waters Treaty. The man who was ahead of his times talked about space-based surveillance, remote sensing, communication satellites and navigation satellites. He said our own navigation system would be a necessity (it is now known as Navigation with Indian Constellation or NavIC).

It was time to see him off. On the way, he told me that I was upfront with the PowerPoint presentation and video projection but had faltered on one occasion during the session. Nothing went unnoticed from his piercing eyes. And he was clearly in a hurry to embrace the future.