ENGLISH SPEECH | R. MADHAVAN: India in 2030 (English Subtitles)

So, first of all, thank you very much for having me here at the Inspire Series.

It’s worked dramatically, I’m already inspired to be addressing this really August

intellectual gathering of people from Harvard, a place that my mother thought I will never

reach.

But you know what, lot of people have spoken before me and eloquently and described their

dreams for India and given figures and facts that either are skeptical and like, Mr. Omar

says, aspirational.

But I’m just an actor and I’m going to just give you my dream shamelessly, because

that’s the thing that I can do best.

And by that, I mean when we talk of dreams we have one of our greatest scientists and

philanthropists Dr. Abdul Kalam, and he said something which is very interesting.

He said, “Dreams are not what you have when you sleep.

The true dreams are the ones that don’t let you sleep”.

He said, “When you have that dream once it’s a dream; when you have it twice it

becomes a desire.

And when you see it for the third time consecutively, it becomes a passion, an aim and a goal”,

and that is the passion with which I want to see this fantasy that I have for India

2030.

And Abraham Lincoln also was a dreamer and you know, but he said one thing that makes

most sense in trying to achieve this goal that I have dreamed for my nation.

He said, “If I have six hours to cut down a tree, then I would spend the first four

hours sharpening the axe.”

There’s a great philosophy in that.

In this era of instant gratification we just keep thinking we can achieve all these goals

by just tweaking this, tweaking that, it’s not true.

I really believe that a missionary zeal is required to make that quantum change, that

can make 2030 of what I’m dreaming about right now.

And just let’s look at India as a country, what a unique nation!

Seriously.

Thousands of years old of culture and tradition, many many invasions, being ruled for many

years and we still somehow managed to maintain our identity.

We still somehow have managed to maintain our Indian-ness — our beliefs, our faith

and you know, yeah, there has been — we have our drawbacks — there is corruption,

there is violence, there is differences between the different religions and sects and caste

and everything.

But I can’t help but think looking at India at the geography that we’re not doing really

that bad.

Look at all the other nations around in the world.

Look at our neighbors, compared to that there is somebody in India who’s doing something