Kalam on Brahmos missile

New Delhi, Jan 9: Saluting the creative energies of the Indian Diaspora, President APJ Abdul Kalam today cited the instance of BRAHMO cruise missile system to drive home the fact that a product, in order to achieve global competitiveness, must be world class, cost-effective and be available in time within its shelf life.

Sharing the unique experience of design, development, production and marketing of the BRAHMOS missile system, an Indo-Russian joint venture, with the representatives of the Indian Diaspora here, Dr Kalam, hailed as ''the missile man of India'', said the two countries had achieved through this venture the development and realisation of a world-class product using the synergy of technological competence and consortium of industries of partner countries.

Dr Kalam, who was making the valedictory address at the three-day Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, said the BRAHMOS missile is the fastest operational cruise missile existing in the world today and can be launched from any type of platform - land, sea, and air and precisely reach the targets either on land or at sea with high lethal effect.

The missile has undergone twelve successive successful flight trials and has been inducted by the Indian Navy. In addition, the product being internationally competitive, it is able to service a large market with availability in time and state of the art performance at reduced cost per unit.

''With minimum incremental investment, the product has been developed and led to production and induction, at a relatively short time frame, well ahead of prescribed schedule. This has enabled early entry of the product into the world market well before any competitor could emerge,'' he said, adding that it proved that if the core competencies of nations were combined, best of knowledge products would emanate well ahead of time.

Dr Kalam also referred to his suggestion he had made during his address to Pan African Parliament in September 2004 for setting up of a Pan-African e-network with the help of India, which would provide e-connectivity to all the 53 countries of Africa and also connect all the Heads of States of the Pan-African countries.

''The idea was to use the core competence of our country to assist these countries in the field of IT for providing at least one hub in each of the African countries through which various e-services like tele-education, tele-medicine and e-governance could be provided,'' he said.

The President was happy to inform the gathering that this offer had been received very well all over the African Continent and 16 countries would be connected in the first quarter of 2007 and the rest would be operationalised by early 2008 at a cost of 100 million dollars.

''From these international partnership experiences, we have evolved what is called a World Knowledge Platform, which will be the launch pad for many innovations that are waiting to be unearthed only by the combined power of all the participants, particularly from multiple nations,'' he added.

UNI