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Date; 20th June 2007, Time: 5:00 PM.
Venue: Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi, INDIA.
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20th June 2007 is supposed to be most memorable day in my
life. I got golden opportunity to meet and interact with
the
President of India-
Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam. The occasion of this
informal meet was the
Summer Camp-2007.
The Department of
Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology
Kanpur has been conducting an exciting annual
four-week technology camp each summer since 2001 for the
second year undergraduate civil engineering students from
across the country. The objective of the camp is to
re-create the romance of Civil Engineering profession and
motivate the participants to excel in this fascinating field
of human endeavor.
A team of 15 MTech students was involved in organizing the
camp, under the guidance of Dr. Ajanta Sachan. I was
involved in
Summer
Camp-2006 as well as Summer Camp-2007 as a
coordinator.
Summer Camp-2007 was a Life Transforming
experience for all of us! We meet leaders
of the civil engineering profession in India: construction
engineers, design consultants, academicians ... who have
excelled in their own fields in the domain of civil
engineering, and are today role models to emulate. The Camp
also takes the participants through a first hand experience
of select prestigious civil engineering projects of the
nation from the historic past to the current genre. The Camp
gets down to action through hands on projects and videos of
Civil Engineering projects of yesteryears. Check out for
yourself what happened in the past years by journeying
though the stories from these years...!
Apart from regular camp
activities at IIT Kanpur, the most exciting part of the camp
was 5 days stay at IIT Delhi. As a
part of camp schedule, we visited some big scale
construction sites in New Delhi during 17th June-21 June
2007. We had very nice interaction with great technocrat-
Dr. E Sreedharan,
Metroman,
MD, DMRC, New Delhi. His speech inspired us to contribute
for the development of nation by serving through Civil
Engineering profession, which has vast potential and great
challenges. We also had presentation by Subramanianr,
Engineer in-Chief, PWD, New Delhi,
discussing on the major steps taken to make Delhi as world
class city. The Chief officers of
Delhi Development Authority (DDA) explained the
infrastructure and world class facilities that are
constructed for
Common Wealth
games-2010. The major site
visits includes Delhi Metro overhead bridge,
Delhi Gudgaon
Expressway, major fly-over in New Delhi and the
Base
isolated
building foundation, which was first attempt in
India. We also visited tourist places like
Akshardham
Temple,
Lotus Temple and
Jantar-Mantar.
On 20th June
2007 we were very excited to meet first citizen of
India- i.e. President of India. We reached
Rashtrapati Bhavan
at 5:00 PM, and the meeting was scheduled at 6:30 PM.
First time in life I crossed the boundary of Rashtrapati
Bhavan, and I was feeling proud to be there. After
completing security check, we started our photography
outside the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
After a short while the officers invited us for
refreshment, and as soon as we took dishes, the band was
started. That was one of the greatest laurel in my life..!
After some time, the President of India arrived. I was
watching the great missile man
from a distance not more than 5 feet.
He started the
motivating conversation
with the Role and contribution of Civil Engineers in nation
building. In summary, he stressed on the issues/projects to
be undertaken by Civil Engineering professionals. The Civil
Engineering is supposed to be the basic branch of
engineering, which has its direct impact with the
society. In future, there will be two major obstacles- not
only for development of India, but also for the human
community. The first one is the Earthquake and second is the
scarcity of water. There should be efficient and economical
way to predict earthquake as well as for avoiding disasters,
there is need of innovations in the engineering design. He
urged all Civil Engineers to look on this problem and obtain
optimize design.
Second and major problem will be the availably of water.
Water is the one of the few natural resources without which
there is no life; and is distributed throughout the country
unevenly in terms of place, season, quality and quantity.
That is to say, particular areas of India,
suffer from drought, while other posses too large quantities
of water, which causes flood. Also, very same region could, in the particular
period of the year, be exposed to the drought, while
suffering form floods in other period. For this reason, it
is essential to optimize the use of water by constructing
dams and other hydraulic structures. This also impose a need
for the artificial distribution of water by undertaking
mega-engineering projects, like River Linking project, in
order to obtain the water for a given place and in a defined
quantity, as well as a pre-determined moment in time.
The
president of India inspired us to contribute for nation by
applying engineering knowledge and innovative solutions. He
also stated that some persons may interrupt you by objecting your
goal, but you should have confidence and courage to think
big. If they are
thinking that your goal is impossible to achieve, then you have to prove
them that everything is possible. The word, impossible
itself states that "I'm possible".
So don't believe on those negative minded persons. He told
us the story of one of the very famous and talented
professor. In 17th century he announce that an object,
heavier than air cannot fly. People believed on that
statement. But in 19th century, Wright Brothers proved with
live demonstration that an aeroplane-designed is such a shape
that even though it is heavier than air, it can fly. The
so-called impossible thing becomes possible and that was very
innovative solution. The concluding statement of his talk on
this issue was- 'Do not believe on the person, who says that
'This is impossible'.
That was very optimistic message for every one. We should
have courage to dream and work hard using your knowledge and
talent to bring the dreams into reality.
Dr. A P J Abdul
Kalam motivated us to give our contribution as a Civil
Engineers for the development of our country, which is
suffering major problems like population growth, corruption,
lack of awareness about education and health. Today 22%
Indians are below poverty line and if we want to bring these
22% above poverty line, then we have to maintain the current
GDP for at least a decade. Some villages in India are still
not connected with roads and electricity. There are no or
little bit education and medical facilities are available in
the villages. The peoples
are rushing towards metro cities in search of employment,
education and health facilities, crating residential problem
and adding pressure on the existing
infrastructure. So, we have to use the technology like
Tele-medicine and
Tele-education to
make the life of villagers more comfortable and to avoid
mass migration in metros. In short, his idea was to make the
self-sufficient villages and he concluded the conversation
by pointing out the issue that objective of education is
not to create the employment seekers, rather than the
graduates should to treated as the employment generators.
The
conversation of half hour was very inspiring and I feels
that I am very lucky as I got this opportunity to be present
on that occasion and it will be the turning point for me. The brain storming session
with President of India will be very fruitful and inspiring
for me, throughout my life. I feel very prideful that I will
also contribute for my nation, the way by which I decided to
join Government sector. I would like to end this article by
stating that-
"There will always be two kinds of
people... those who follow a beaten path and those who
design their own...for others to follow."
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