NT NETWORK
PANAJI: The eminent Goan scientist, Dr Anil Kakodkar on Saturday said that if fulfilling family responsibilities includes providing the right education to one’s children, self-empowering family members and so on, then under this yardstick he has largely succeeded as a family man.
“However, if it meant spending time with one’s family, then obviously there would be many shortcomings on my part,” he added, “And I admit them and further feel sorry for the same.”
Dr Kakodkar who faced a public interview along with his mother, Ms Kamala Kakodkar; wife, Ms Suyesha Kakodkar and sister, Ms Sushama Gangal, at the Kala Academy complex, further said that there are only 24 hours in a day and everyone needed to prioritise his things.
Earlier, Ms Suyesha Kakodkar informed that Dr Kakodkar, who has held the prestigious posts of chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, often left home at around 9 a.m. for his office and returned only after midnight. “The family however, got accustomed to the time table in the course of time,” she added, stating that fortunately Dr Kakodkar is not an angry man by nature.
Replying to a question, Dr Kakodkar said that there were not too many options before him during his childhood, and the entire thrust was on stabilising the family, which was based in Madhya Pradesh. “But then there was lot of merit for remaining useful to things around me; to be a good human being,” the eminent scientist observed, maintaining that getting a job was not difficult for him but he wanted a job that would allow him to do new things. “And implicitly I wanted to something for the country,” he noted.
Answering another question, Dr Kakodkar said that for him nuclear weapons are weapons of peace as well as deterrence, at the same time. “When it comes to national security, deterrence is of paramount importance,” he added. Replying to yet another question, Dr Kakodkar said that though democracy is a great leveller, searching pathways to nurture excellence is a discriminative process and therefore, his work at the BARC was not so democratic.
Dr Kakodkar also observed that we should leave young people to make their own informed choices and carry out self-examination.
Ms Kamala Kakodkar, a staunch Gandhian who has worked with Mahatma Gandhi said that she, at times, wanted her son to take occasional rest from his hectic work schedules, but his urge for work made him ignore her advice. She also stated that Gandhiji never supported non-violence of cowardice, and had given a call for ‘Do or Die’, which meant that do anything which is good for the country till death.
Ms Sushama Gangal remembered Dr Kakodkar as a good elder brother, who inspired her to go for higher education by mentioning that education was the only tool they had.
