It was on July 27, 2015 that President APJ Abdul Kalam breathed his last in this city. He was delivering a lecture at IIM Shillong where he was a visiting faculty and collapsed in the middle of the lecture. That episode marks the single-minded devotion that the late President had for his work and commitment to educating the younger generation. APJ Abdul Kalam served as the 11th President of India from 2002- 2007. Known as the peoples’ President and the missile man of India for having led the team that built the Indian ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology, Dr Kalam also played a major role in the Pokhran-II nuclear tests. He was the leading light at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) two of the most important defence establishments of the country. Dr Kalam’s happiest moments are spent with young people answering their questions and coming down to their level – a characteristic which very few luminaries possessed. It was this willingness to contribute to the intellectual capital of the country that brought Dr Kalam to IIM Shillong to share his knowledge, wisdom and experiences with the students. The loss of Dr Kalam is something that the country can never replace.
IIM Shillong has rightly created the APJ Abdul Kalam Centre for Policy Research and Analysis which seeks to embody the philosophy of the late President by leveraging knowledge, technology and humanism to achieve sustainable development and a just and equitable social order. The Centre aims to emerge as a state of the art resource centre to assist the states of North East India and the implementing agencies to plan and execute projects in a more pragmatic manner. The Centre also aims to promote innovations and to function as a repository of the best practices in the region, especially in development planning of six critical sectors namely logistics, tourism, horticulture, handicraft, handloom and business process outsourcing. This would cover all the vital areas of development planning, strategising, analysis and policy formulation. The Centre was created vide a tripartite agreement between IIM Shillong, the North Eastern Council (NEC) and the Ministry for the Development of the North Eastern Region (MDoNER). This Centre aims to network with various institutes across the North Eastern region to come up with a holistic plan of action. Since its establishment four years ago the Centre has been able to liaise with NEC and DoNER to provide an economic roadmap in the above-mentioned key areas of development in the region. Even during this lockdown period the APJ Abdul Kalam Centre for Policy Research and Analysis has been regularly engaging in webinars to address the current challenges posed by Covid-19. The hope is that this Centre bridges the knowledge gaps in policy advocacy.