My Republidc day Speech.

Hello JNTU,

Honorable chief guest, Respected Heads of the Departments, Respected teaching faculty and all my dear friends.

I convey my warm wishes to everyone in this nation. All of you have finished some 14-15 years of education and I believe that you are well aware of the importance of this day.

Let me speak something relevant to today’s scenario.

Once on youtube I came across a speech delivered by Barack Obama. It was dated 4^th November 2008, the same day he was elected the president of the United States of America.

He started

“Hello Chicago,

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where everything is possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is still alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy. Tonight is your answer.”

A single sentence! A simple question! He answered it. But that night I had a big debate with my friends on this question. I hurt me as an Indian. If someone asks the same question in India, I think the answer would be a blunt “No”.

But as a citizen of this country, with the meager knowledge of the current issues, I tried to find some solutions and will present a few before you.

Our nation has a population of 1.15 billion. When we ask someone te problems facing the country the first would be population. Why go for negative aspects . There are many countries in the world whose population densities more than our country, resources less than our nation. Still they are progressing. Let us be optimistic. We have a huge resource-“the human resource.” This can be the greatest force ever in the world for development.

What we need is a change. A change in our ideology. A change we can we can believe in.

Till the recent crash down of the IT sector India is the favorite destination for outsourcing. But a crash down some where in The United States had its impact on our jobs. Do we really depend on others for our jobs? No……… Yes. Both are correct. We are not dependent but are made dependent.

We have some around 350,000 engineers graduating in India as against 80,000 in The US. And it is going to touch around 1.400,000 by 2015.And the percent of Science and engineering graduates in our country is higher than China and US.A thing for us to celebrate.

But the celebration ends here. But where does the seed go? We have a meager 6,500 PhDs in Science and engineering. We have only around 2.16% of world’s research papers published. We can see how awkward the quality of education is. We have neglected the core research and gone after the lucrative IT jobs. We have to change.

Our government has 105,600 crores for the defense budget and the total education budget is only one-third of it. Of which only 85 crores is given for encouraging research. I don’t say that defense should be neglected. But instead of buying missiles, ships and war planes, why can’t we invest a part of it in research and get these made at a fraction of what we are spending, with the help of our second army i.e. the educated youth.

I think we should change, change our priorities- a change we can believe in.

Another key is politics. An issue that kept us excited for over two years is the American Presidential election. We have seen President Obama fight with Hillary Clinton right from the Primary. But after his victory they pledged to work together. After that he fought with Senator McCain. After he won over him they pledged to fight- not against each other, but to fight for their country. We cannot see that here where the ruling and the opposition fight against each other neglecting the common goals i.e. the welfare of the nation.

Another thing to celebrate is that a young Indian American Bobby Jindal is going to give the keynote address at the Republican Convention at Washington in March. But here the old politicians vie for key posts as exposed in Jharkhand ……….not allowing the young blood to come in.

What we need is a change- a change in our politics. A change we can believe in.

So my friends if you have the same dreams as I, the same zeal as I, the same passion as I.

Let us change. Let us start a revolution.

A revolution need not come from millions. A revolution can change a man. A man can change a few. A few can change hundreds. Hundreds can change thousands. Thousands can change millions. Millions can change a billion. And that billion is our nation.

Thank You.