Ram Nath Kovind, 71, who took the oath as the country’s 14th President on Tuesday, said the key to India’s success was its diversity, and gave an inspirational call to “sculpt a robust, high-growth economy, an educated, ethical and shared community, and an egalitarian society, as envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi and Deen Dayal Upadhyay.”
“We need to build an India that is an economic leader as well as a moral exemplar. For us, those two touchstones can never be separate,” Kovind said in his first address as President to a packed Central Hall of Parliament.
Among those who attended the ceremony were former Presidents, Prime Ministers, Union Cabinet Ministers, MPs from Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, Governors and Chief Ministers from most States and Union Territories, and a host of foreign dignitaries.
Terming the country’s former Presidents — Rajendra Prasad, S Radhakrishnan, APJ Abdul Kalam and Pranab Mukherjee — as “stalwarts”, Kovind said he was conscious that he was “following in their footsteps” and was accepting this position “with all humility.”
Kovind, the country’s second Dalit President after KR Narayanan, said 70 years after Independence, “we have achieved a lot as a nation, but the effort to do more, to do better and to do faster is relentless. It is appropriate that the land of Lord Buddha should lead the world in its search for peace, tranquillity and ecological balance.”
He said the “entire planet is drawn to Indian culture and soft power,” adding that the global community looks to Indians for solutions to international problems such as terrorism, money laundering or climate change. “In a globalised world, our responsibilities are also global,” he added.
Making a point that nations are not “built by governments alone”, the President termed each citizen — police, armed forces, farmers, scientists, nurses, doctors, start-up entrepreneurs, teachers, tribals and women — as nation-builders, adding that “nation-building requires national pride.”