The Hindu : Work for higher GDP growth: Kalam

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 08, 2003

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Work for higher GDP growth: Kalam

By Our Staff Reporter

The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, and M.R. Doreswamy (second from left), founder PES institutions, after inaugurating PES Institute of Medical Sciences and Research at Kuppam, in Andhra Pradesh on Saturday. — Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

KUPPAM June 7. The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has said a strong GDP growth alone can propel the country's overall development and asked the student community to work untiringly to achieve the goal.

Inaugurating the Kuppam Engineering College (KEC) and the PES Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (PESIMSR) at Kuppam in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, the constituency represented by the State Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, Dr. Kalam said that a rapid growth in the gross domestic product from the present 4.5 per cent to 10 per cent alone could spur development, as it would have a direct bearing on the 26 crore people living below the poverty line (BPL). Agriculture, Information Technology, exports, basic infrastructure and health and education were the growth engines to speed up economic prosperity.

Indians were generating business to the tune of $12 billions worldwide in the IT sector alone.

Referring to the `tele-medicine'' concept, which wa reaching the downtrodden.

``As a first step, I urge the engineering and medicine students in the audience to get basic health services to the remotest corner of this Kuppam constituency in the form of mobile health clinics, as is being done by the Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences in Uttaranchal,'' he said.

The President said that HIV, cancer and tuberculosis, apart from cardiac ailments and water-borne diseases needed immediate attention.

Referring to stem cell technology, ``a revolutionary research area'' in medicine, Dr. Kalam suggested to the PES Education Trust to have a dedicated department for the highly specialised subject.

A few weeks before he was tipped for the post of President, Dr. Kalam, in course of his address to the students of the Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences (SVIMS) in Tirupati, favoured setting up of a similar facility there, which was realised in no time by the State Government.

The Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, expressed happiness that his dream of getting a state-of-the-art facility in his constituency inaugurated by a statesman and top scientist, Dr. Kalam, had come true.

The State Ministers, K. Sivaprasad (Medical and Health) and B. Gopalakrishna Reddy (Employment Generation), and the PES Trust's founder-secretary, M.R. Doreswamy, participated.

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