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Amber Ahuja met former President Abdul Kalam in 2004 for a ten-minute appointment which lasted for 45. Ahuja asked Kalam about the dynamics of the ambitious “Vision 2020”.

“What do you do?” asked Kalam. The management graduate replied he is a consultant with the University of New South Wales. The former teacher remarked, “You work with a university and you don’t teach?”

He continued, “Vision 2020 can only be made possible if Indians identify and contribute to its mass development.” Ahuja asked him how he can be part of this goal and contribute. Ahuja always had his eye on India. He realised that unemployment was growing at an alarming pace because education in India has been modelled on a “mass level”. He says, “The formal Indian education system in place does nothing to tap the skills of individuals.” So that’s when he started working on “Be Inspired – Make an Informed Career Decision”, a project which took him three years to research and compile. The book records the life stories and achievements of personalities from diverse fields — from fashion designers J.J. Valaya and Ritu Beri and mountaineer Bachendri Pal to musician Shankar Mahadevan. “I analysed their responses and then gathered the essences and key things that goes into making people successful.”

Ahuja formulated three basic premises – that from the policy’s point of view, education will have to be redesigned, that individual production has a cascading effect and that making an informed career decision comes under the influence of “O factors” like parents, teachers and peers.

The 252-pages paperback, published by Rupa and Co. (Rs. 295) is his contribution to Kalam’s “Vision 2020”.

AYESHA MATTHAN

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