Science & Tech Quote by Abdul Kalam

Kalam’s questions land like a friendly scolding from the country’s most persuasive technocrat: not anti-global, but anti-inferiority. He frames consumer desire as a national habit, not an individual quirk, then pushes the listener to notice how quickly “choice” becomes reflex. The repetition of “We want” mimics an advertising jingle, except the slogan is self-erasure. It’s a clever inversion: the cadence of aspiration used to indict the direction aspiration has been trained to point.

The colonial reference is doing heavy work. Kalam isn’t just blaming the past; he’s naming a psychological aftertaste - the idea that quality, prestige, and modernity arrive stamped in someone else’s language. Imported goods become props in a performance of advancement, a way to buy status without having to build it. That’s why he goes broad (TV sets, shirts, technology): he’s connecting the mundane to the strategic. It’s not really about shirts. It’s about whether a nation that can produce scientists will still outsource its self-confidence.

Context matters: coming from a statesman associated with India’s scientific and defense institutions, the critique doubles as an economic argument. If desire is permanently routed outward, domestic manufacturing and innovation struggle to earn legitimacy at home, where it should be easiest to win. Kalam’s intent is cultural reprogramming: turn patriotism away from flag-waving and toward competence, pride in making, and the hard, unglamorous work of building systems that can compete without begging for validation.