Ratan Tata's speech at the unveiling ceremony of the 'Nano'

Ladies and Gentleman, thank you for being with us on this memorable occasion. There are no celebrities at this function nor any dance routines. The center of attraction for this morning's event is the new Tata car which we are unveiling.

We're going to take you on a small journey. A journey that symbolizes the human spirit of change, the will to question the unquestionable, the drive to stretch the envelope.

Ladies and gentleman, I invite you to join me in this journey of innovation and evolution. The quest to lead and the quest to conquer. It is this quest that led to the first manned flight by the Wright brothers. Today, thousands of aircrafts travel the skies carrying millions of passengers across the globe in safety and comfort. The same quest for leadership and conquering new frontiers led to landing man on the moon, an unheard of and unbelievable achievement at that time.

Innovation and evolution led to the creation of a bicycle which the rider pedaled to move faster than walking. Later, innovation motorized the bicycle to create the motorcycle and the scooter, providing motorized transport for up to two persons. The ENIAC computer in 1945, considered among the highest powered at that time filled an entire room. Today, the power of that huge machine is exceeded in the personal computer that sits on our desks or in fact, that we carry as laptops in our briefcases.

There are solutions for most problems. The barriers and roadblocks that we face are usually of our own making and these can only be demolished by having the determination to find a solution, even contrary to the conventional wisdom that prevails around us, by breaking tradition.

Today's story started some years ago when I observed families riding on two wheelers, the father driving a scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife sitting behind him holding a baby and I asked myself whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all weather form of transport for such a family. A vehicle that could be affordable and low cost enough to be within everyone's reach, a people's car, built to meet all safety standards, designed to meet or exceed emission norms and be low in pollution and high in fuel efficiency. This then was the dream we set ourselves to achieve. Many said this dream could not be achieved. Some scuffed at what we would produce, perhaps a vehicle comprising two scooters attached together or perhaps an unsafe rudimentary vehicle, a poor excuse for a car. Let me assure you and also assure our critics that the car we have designed and we will be presenting to you today will indeed meet all the current safety requirements of a modern day car.

Of late, when it became known that we will in fact be making such a car, the attention has moved to questioning the pollution it would create. Let me again assure those who have concern for the environment that the car we present to you today will meet all current legislated emission criteria and will have a lower pollution level than even a two wheeler being manufactured in India today.

Concerns are also now being expressed about the congestion that could be caused by the existence of our small car in large numbers. I believe this needs to be put in the right perspective. There is no doubt that India is woefully behind its neighbours in infrastructure. The government is endeavoring to address this situation with its new road policy. Looking ahead, five years from today, were we to produce and sell 5,00,000 small cars every year, we would then, at the end of five years constitute approximately 2.5% of all passenger vehicles in the country. This could hardly be considered the nightmare of congestion that is being raised today about our new small car.

Despite what the critics said, despite what our antagonistic did, we pursued our vision to give India an affordable people's car that had not been produced anywhere in the world. In fact, a car that most people said could not be manufactured for that kind of price. But we never took our eyes of our goal. Today we will present what a young group of engineers and designers gave their all, for about four years to achieve.

Anyway I have said enough ladies and gentlemen, now I give you the new car from Tata Motors, the people's car that everyone has been waiting for.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again for being with us. We are very pleased to present these cars to you today. They are not concept cars. They are not prototypes. They are the production cars that will roll out of the Singur plant later this year. And these will come in several variants. You have today on the stage one basic car or standard car and two deluxe cars which will have air conditioning also. Yes there will be air conditioning.

This is been referred to as one man's dream and indeed it was. But it took a tremendous amount of team work to convert this or translate this into reality. And I think it would be but fair and fitting to recognize and acknowledge the achievement of young group engineers who undertook the challenge for four years and great sacrifice to themselves and produced this car. I'd like to acknowledge Girish Wagh who headed the team. Girish, would you come up here? And some of his team members who are here with him. There are close to five hundred people in the team and obviously not all of them can be here, so on behalf of all of us we would like to acknowledge, on behalf of the company what the team has been able to do. All five hundred of them. I would also like to ask Ravi Kant (Managing Director, Tata Motors Ltd.), Prakash Telang (Executive Director (Commercial Vehicles), Tata Motors Ltd.) and Rajiv Dube (President (Passenger Cars), Tata Motors Ltd.) to join me up here at this time.

Let me say something about the car. The cars you see, as you can, are four door, they will seat four to five persons, they are powered by a 33 horse power, 624 cc engine. In size, externally it is approximately 8% smaller, bumper to bumper, than the Maruti 800. But internally it is 21% larger in passenger space. Fuel economy in terms of mileage, it'll be around 20 kilometers per liter or approximately 50 miles a gallon.

As I said earlier, much has been said about emission and much has been said about congestion and safety. Let me address the emission and the safety issues. In emissions as I mention, the car has, in fact passed the full frontal crash test that is required in this country (India). But it is also been designed to pass the offset and the side crash which is required internationally. So that the car can, in fact, be sold internationally.

In terms of pollution, it today confirms to Bharat III and in fact today with this engine will indeed meet Euro IV which is not yet required in this country (India).

We decided we'd call it Nano because it connotes high technology and small size. So we stayed with the name.

Finally all of you have been conjecturing about the price. And since we commenced this exercise four years ago, we are all aware that there has been a very steep increase in input prices of steel, tires and various and sundry other inputs. Bearing all this in mind, I would like to announce today that the standard car will in fact have a dealer price of One Lakh Only (100,000 INR), VAT and transport being extra. Now having said that, I just want to say that that is because a promise is a promise and that's what we would like to leave you with.

Letter of Abdul Kalam to all Indian

I have three visions for India.
In 3000 years of our history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds.

From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Muslims, the Portuguese, the British,the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their
land,their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the freedom of others.
That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM.
I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence.It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and built on. If we are not free, no one will respect us.
My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT.
For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation.We are among top nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10 percent growth rate in most areas.
Our poverty levels are falling.Our achievements are being globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as
a developed nation,self reliant and self assured. Isn't this right?
I have a third vision. The India must stand up to the world.Because I believe that unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go and-in-hand.
My good fortune was to have worked with three great minds.
Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space, Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him, and Dr. Brahm Prakash,father of nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the great opportunity of my life.

I see four milestones in my career:
ONE:
Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was given the opportunity to be
the project director for India's first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3.
The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role
in my life of Scientist.
TWO:
After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of India's guided missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission requirements in 1994.
THREE:
The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership in
the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third
bliss.The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests
and proving to the world that India can make it, that we are no longer
a developing nation but one of them.
It made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now
developed for Agni a re-entry structure,for which we have developed
this new material. A Very light material called carbon-carbon.
FOUR:
One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences
visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light
that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There
were these little girls and boys with heavy metallic calipers weighing
over three Kgs. each, dragging their feet around.
He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients.In three weeks, we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300 gram calipers and took them to the orthopedics center. The children didn't believe their eyes. From
dragging around a three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around! Their parents had tears in their eyes.That was my fourth bliss!

Why is the media here so negative?
Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths,
our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing
success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.Why?
We are the second largest producer of wheat in the world.We are
the second largest producers in rice. We are the first in milk
production. We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self driving unit.
There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed
with the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper.
It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had
taken place.
The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the
picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his
desert land into orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.
In India we only read about death,sickness,terrorism,crime.
Why are we so negative?
Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign
things? we want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We want
foreign technology.Why this obsession with everything imported?
Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?
I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is:
She replied: I want to live in a developed India.
For her, you and I will have to built this developedIndia. You must proclaim.

- Abdul Kalam.
(Bharat Ratna)