On a rainy Sunday morning the who's who of the corporate, social and political India reached the southernmost tip of Nariman Point, not for a business meeting, but to hear President A P J Abdul Kalam pay tribute to Dhirubhai Ambani, who had built the country's only private sector company to figure in the Fortune 500 list in less than three decades.
Rich tributes were paid to the karma yogi, who tirelessly fought the system to emerge a victor and build an empire from scratch.
Such has been the magic of Dhirubhai Ambani, the founder of Reliance Industries, that the President, while delivering the inaugural Dhirubhai Ambani Memorial lecture "Growth is life" in Mumbai on the first death anniversary of the patriarch of the Reliance group, said "Dhirubhai represented a strong mind which propagated that having a small aim was a crime. His action gave courage to small entrepreneurs to think big and work towards it."
Pointing out that the late industrialist had an "indomitable spirit", Kalam narrated two couplets from Thiruvalluvar's Kural.
He said, "It was Dhirubhai's indomitable spirit, dedication to his aim, self-belief and determination in conquering all obstacles to achieve his goals that helped him in making significant changes in his own town and in India at large."
He urged young entrepreneurs to develop villages into growth hubs and to help provide physical, electronic, knowledge and economic connectivity.
Kalam said industrialists could help in developing villages into growth hubs by providing funds for "physical, electronic, knowledge and economic connectivity". This, he said, would give an impetus to rural India and provide it with the scope to harness growth, thereby changing the lives of over 260 million people who lived below the poverty line.
