APJ Abdul Kalam, the former president of India, on many occasions expressed his desire and came up with specific suggestions for helping expedite the development endeavours of Bangladesh towards cutting poverty.The scientist, who chose a life of educating people especially the young generation on how to fight against odds to achieve their goals, had a dream of making the SAARC region, including Bangladesh, poverty-free. The scientist, who believed in dreaming big, visited Bangladesh on many occasions and delivered speeches on a range of topics covering politics, society, economics and gender. His speeches always were a combination of his enthralling presentation, precise references and periodic humors and when delivered would keep the audience spell-bound.However, laughter and applauses also would break the audiences’ silence as the presentations would generate not only thought-provoking ideas and issues, but also a wave of wits.Dr Kalam in his speeches in Dhaka and many other places in the region often referred to his own model for rural development, advising that this could be replicated for rural development towards freeing this region from poverty. While delivering a speech at an august gathering of policymakers, economists, businesses leaders and civil society members in Dhaka last year, he recommended replicating one of his best practised development models, widely known as “PURA – Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas”.The former president mooted the PURA, a strategy for rural development in India, which was eventually followed in many areas in his country for successful rural development.He advised that Bangladesh could set up 1000 PURA complexes to make its rural areas vibrant engines of development and growth, and the PURA would be based on agriculture, such as jute and fish products and industries including high-tech and tourism. He also presented a PURA model for Khulna division, suggesting that this area would have 150 PURA complexes especially based on bamboo, jute and jute products.Kalam also put in place the idea of developing ecotourism and forest products in the mangrove forest-based Khulna region, which can generate a string of employment opportunities. He said, physical, electronic and knowledge connectivity could prove to be effective to prevent the exodus of rural people into cities, with facilitating earning capacity and eventually leading to economic connectivity.During his tenure as India’s 11th president, Dr Kalam was closely associated with and active in many economic and social development activities of his country, India, and the regional forums like the SAARC.Citing his experiences, he said when urban amenities to rural areas are provided, the investors of small scale industries can be attracted and effective financing systems like microfinance can also be introduced there on a large scale.Besides, rural areas must have infrastructures like schools, hospitals and amenities for local populations when women education would have the highest priority as they would play a vital role in reducing population growth.For driving a nation with this vision and mission, the former president who also struggled to attain his individual towering success, emphasized on creating an honest and transparent leadership who would have qualities of “vision, mission and realization”. The former president also strongly advocated furthering bilateral relations between Bangladesh and India for fighting against poverty with achieving sustainable growth. He believed that the friendly relationship between Bangladesh and India was natural, but more integration in diverse areas was required for speeding up growth process of these two neighbours.During a talk with Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus at the Grameen Bank headquarters in 2009, Dr Kalam said better management of water can ensure regional benefit of this resource. He also suggested India and Bangladesh to join hands to promote jute, saying their joint initiatives can eliminate plastic products from the world and benefit their economies.
