Kalam: The Untold Story

By R K Prasad

Role model. Icon. Space scientist. Missile man. Bestselling author. Bharat Ratna. Besides Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. Dozens of other honours. A following of millions. The most popular President ever.

In the small, exclusive world of New Delhi's power centres, however, all that can count for little with the bureaucrats who set the rules and the politicians to whom they report. In Kalam: The Untold Story, R.K. Prasad, his private secretary from 1993 to his death in 2015, shows us another Kalam-accomplished, successful, always modest despite the high positions he occupied, as also vulnerable and innocent. It is a journey Prasad was part of, from Kalam's time as Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and as DRDO chief, through Principal Scientific Adviser and President, and the years after the presidency.

Kalam throws new light on his relationship with political leaders, including those at the highest level, and the truth behind some of the controversies. Most of all it shows Kalam at his best, facing adversity and disappointment in a way that explains why he was what he was-an extraordinary man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9789354359880

Book preview

1

A New Job

I cannot think of anything I can say about my life until I began working for A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. There seemed nothing distinctive about it, and there seemed nothing distinctive about my surroundings and the people in it either.

In 1985 I arrived in Delhi from Palakkad in Kerala, having been selected for a job in the central government after passing the Staff Services Selection Commission exams. I was quite blank – in every sense of the word – when I arrived. I knew little about anything, having lived all my life in small towns (in the pre-Internet age). My father had been a state government officer in Kerala, and I had studied in a government school and graduated from Calicut University. On being selected for the job, I was asked to report at the defence ministry in Delhi. My father accompanied me to Delhi, dropped me at a friend’s home and returned immediately.

I was appointed as a junior secretarial assistant in the defence ministry. I was there for a little over five years. In 1991–1992 I was posted to the defence minister’s office. This was something I had wanted. In fact, I had got in touch with many people requesting for this posting. Most of them could not understand what the attraction of this posting was as it did not entail a change in my designation or level. But for me, a job in a minister’s office meant that I would be allotted a house quicker.

I never got to meet the defence minister, of course. There was a strict hierarchy in the office, as there is in most government offices, and layers of bureaucracy. Only the political secretary and the minister’s inner circle of friends and advisers got to meet him. Anyway, most ministers are more comfortable with their close staff speaking their own language. To my delight I was allotted my quarters within a short time, but the work was killing. Whereas earlier I would finish work by 7 or 7.30 p.m., I discovered that in a minister’s office work never ends. It used to be at least 9.30 p.m. before I was released for the day, and there was no guarantee of a free Saturday or Sunday either. I had pushed hard to get there, and found myself in a fine mess.

I worked in the defence minister’s office in South Block from 1991 to 1993, till the minister resigned after the Mumbai bomb blasts in March to take over as chief minister of Maharashtra. The office then got disbanded and the staff were posted out. I now returned to my previous office, which was the office of the scientific adviser to the defence minister. Little did I know that, workwise, it would be out of the frying pan and into the fire for me.

Kalam had been appointed a year earlier, in 1992, as scientific adviser to the minister of defence and was also chief of the Department of Defence Research and Development (popularly known as DRDO, the Defence Research and Development Organisation). I had seen him earlier, perhaps first in 1989 in South Block, when he was visiting from Hyderabad. I had heard about the space programme and knew he was the person behind India’s missile programmes. He was then director of the Missile Laboratory, based in Hyderabad, and director of the missile programme. He kept a busy schedule and spoke English with a very strong Tamil accent. I knew little else beyond that.

I did not get to interact with Kalam the first three or four months after my posting back in the same old office. This is because seniority plays a big role in what is assigned to you and determines access to the top man. Those above me in the office were of the level of senior private secretary and staff officer to Kalam and all had 15–20 years of experience in the same office handling confidential matters. They were also experts in crisis management.

In such highly sensitive offices handling secret work, no junior or new person is allowed access to certain documents, papers and information. Some categories of work come to them only after a few months of service and background verification by security agencies. Their entry to and exit from office is always monitored.

Then one day, I got to interact with Kalam. An important fax landed on my table. The seniors were not around. The fax was for the department, so I went into Kalam’s room and gave it to him. He asked me my name and where I was from. He spoke to me for ten minutes. He was dressed in a bush shirt and trousers, his favoured clothes even as President later. He seemed not at all interested in his appearance. For formal events he would wear a