Distinguished guests,
Let me, at the outset, compliment and congratulate all the awardees, who are the centrepiece of a function of this kind Here, we have some very distinguished people who have inspired me to make some of my political speeches. For example, I was surprised to know that the award for the Most Innovative Organisation has gone to BCCI for Twenty20. But it’s understandable in some ways. Even in my last election campaign, there was hardly a meeting where I did not refer to Twenty20. There are many agreements in the political space where they write that for the first 20 months, you rule, and in the next 20 months, I will rule. What will happen if in a Twenty20 match, the team that has batted first says I will bat for the next 20 overs too?

Modiji (Lalit Modi, vice-president, BCCI) was saying he has always been a cricket fan. I too have been a fan of cricket since my childhood but I have never known any team saying that you may have your captain, but we will name our captain after the match is over. So, analogies like these come to mind only when I see eminent people like you.

Friends, I must say that I was greatly embarrassed, and of course, indebted when a couple of months back, I was invited to the awards function. I said, "Why me?" Here people understand every aspect of economics. I was greatly impressed by the display of slides at the beginning of today’s function. They dwelt on the paradoxes in Indian economy. The question is how do you deal with this : paradoxes of wealth and poverty, paradoxes of success and failure. These are the tasks before the nation and before me also. And this is not just today, but since the beginning when I first came into politics.

India is such a land of paradoxes that if the country was able to deal with them, there is no power on earth which can prevent it from becoming the first country of the world. And therefore, the principal task in front of us -- not only those of us who are in the field of business and industry as you are -- but also people who are in the field of politics as I am, is how do you deal with these paradoxes? We have screaming headlines day after day that India would have more billionaires than any other country of the world. On the other hand, we see the plight of the people; how poor they are. Similarly, there are failures and successes. How do you reconcile them? There was a time about 25 years back when people did not know about the potential of India. The world over, the image of India was that of a poor country and poor people.

I was shocked when I visited Australia as a member of a Parliamentary delegation in 1974, and at a reception where many eminent people were present, one of them, who happened to be a vice-chancellor of a big university, asked me, “You are Mr Advani from India?” I said yes, and he asked, “Are there any universities in India?” This was a question posed to me by a vice-chancellor!

I felt insulted but the image of India till a few decades back was of this kind. Today, the image has changed and therefore, I agree with the slides, which said that the solution lies in our democracy and our civilisation, which essentially strengthen harmony in our people despite all the paradoxes. I wish this theme was elaborated more.

I may be among the very few who have had the privilege and good fortune of seeing all the general elections in independent India since 1952, either as a campaigner or as a candidate. I can tell you that in my early years, I have heard cynics in the west saying that India cannot succeed, parliamentary democracy cannot succeed in India.

It is also true that most of the countries, which were under colonial rule, had started with parliamentary democracy after becoming independent. But democracy fell by the wayside in most of these countries. Either they became some kind of an authoritarian rule or military rule. See what has been happening in our neighbourhood.

Whereas we, except for a brief 19-month gap -- which I enjoyed greatly because I was given compulsory rest in the Bangalore Central Jail – have been a vigorous, vibrant democracy, which makes me proud and makes the whole world look to India with respect. Here is a developing country; it may have poverty, it may have backwardness, but see how democracy is a grand success.

The second factor which has earned us respect, is that for quite some time in the early decades, our leadership was so impressed by Soviet Russia, that for economic strategy, we tried to take lessons from them. Sometime in the year 1989, a friend of mine sent me an editorial of The Pravda, a Moscow daily, with a translation along with it, and I read that the editorial was on the economic situation of India.

The first few paragraphs wrote about the immense potential India has – mineral wealth, water resources, human resources, etc. The next three paragraphs described how despite this potential, it is so backward, poor and rotten, and there is so much illiteracy. And the final three paragraphs summed it up saying that this situation is so because after independence, India chose to imitate Soviet Russia. I am referring to it only because since the early nineties, when we abandoned the license-permit-quota raj and coming to functions of these kind was not regarded as something against democracy and it was respected.

Earlier, I was never invited at such functions. Even in political parlance, to talk about Tata and Birla was something pejorative. The situation has changed completely—license-permit-quota raj se mukti ho gayee. But even though the situation has changed, I would think that we still have to evolve an economic strategy, which doesn’t just give us growth but gives us inclusive growth. And for that we must understand that the economic crisis we face today has its roots essentially in the agricultural crisis.

And unless we are able to deal with that effectively – I did not take note of the fact that in the awards if there is any award relating to that sector of the economy – I wish they were there. Because you can’t have a situation of the present kind in which a bulk of the people who depend on agriculture are not a part of the process of growth.

You may have heard of Mr C K Prahlad, the well known management expert. Recently, he has written a book which has impressed me greatly – The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. I would like to quote one part from his book, “If we stop seeing the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognising them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunities will open before us.”

For example, IT, which has come mainly to the urban area, must go to the countryside and every village in the country should have IT-savvy youth. If we are able to do that, this in itself would be a great leap forward. What C K Prahlad says is no different from what Gandhiji said many years ago when he talked about Antyodaya. After all, the strength of a chain lies in its weakest link. So the poor person, the weak person, the person at the lowest rung of the ladder should be the focus of all your concern.

So far as the youth are concerned, only this morning some trainee journalists were asking me as to what my advice to the youth would be and would I want them to participate in politics. I told them very frankly that so far as I am concerned, many people come to me and say that we should be active in politics. I ask them their age and they say I am 23 or 25. I ask them if they have enrolled themselves as voters, and they say, “Not yet”. My advice is” First do that, enrol yourself as a voter, and vote in an election. I have known many people who discuss a lot about politics but when an election comes, they don’t vote. I have seen people saying with pride that I have never voted in my life.

So when young people come to me and ask whether they should join politics, I say please don’t. You become a voter and to that extent become active in politics, exercise your vote in a way that is the best to serve the country but don’t become active in politics until you have completed your studies. And whatever you have studied for, if you want to become a lawyer or a journalist, do that first, distinguish yourself in that field you have chosen for yourself, and then come to politics. And that too because people around you want you to come to politics. It should not be merely for some job. This is my advice. And when I say this, a lot depends on our concern for the country as a whole.

You honoured a company that is in the pharmaceutical field but another company in the same field is no longer Indian. This makes me worried and disturbed. People have told me that it is globalization and naturally everyone has commercial interests in mind. I said I cannot find fault with this in all cases. But there ought to be a third dimension also in certain cases — I would be happy if it is in all cases. People say that this is happening all over the world; there are two American aerated water companies – Coke and Pepsi, which command the whole globe. I said that’s all right, that does not worry me at all as it does not worry me if smaller aerated water companies go out of business.

But in case of a company which because of its research is able to come up to a position where it can supply the people of this country with drugs at a very reasonable price , and gradually one by one, such companies disappear, and monopoly of certain other companies outside the country comes to rule the roost, how will it affect our poor people. It is in that context that I would say that commercial interests are understandable in the field of business and industry, but commercial interests should never override the considerations of national interest. Consideration of national interest should become a part of the way we think. This is all that I can say.

Thank you very much