India, a land of diverse culture and religion is on its way to development. Being a land with different religions, languages, and cultures, India stands unique amidst the Asian countries, still on her way to be a developed nation. The whole nation is running after solutions for the country's development. A nation's development and prosperity lies in the hands of its citizens. Each individual has to be developed; as they are the one who makes the society and these societies makes a nation. Now it's widely accepted that the individual development is vital for a nation's development.

Our former President APJ Abdul Kalam recently explained his ideas on federalism through a PowerPoint presentation at the 4th International Conference on Federalism. Explaining his ideas to the 1000 delegates that included heads of states, Kalam insisted on a region based development to sustain the economic growth of our country. ‘Even though India consists of 28 states which are multi-religious, multi-lingual and multi-cultural with a federal structure, our growth has to be region based. As our rivers, hills, climate, minerals are region based development schemes also must be region based’, he said.

The concept ‘Region based development’, expects more concentration on a specific region, focused on the development of that region, thereby promoting national development. To make the idea clear and more practical, Kalam categorized India into seven regions- Northern, Western, Gangetic, North-East, Deccan, Southern and the Coastal. The core competence of each region was brought out through the presentation and each region as a whole was expected to have a holistic approach and vision to make progress in those sectors of core competence and to converge together at a national sphere through a healthy relationship of sharing the fruits of their knowledge and core competence together. A better example was provided by taking up the Southern region, comprising Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, east Kerala and southern Andhra Pradesh. They have the core expertise in agro-based industries, biotechnology, information technology, and BPO sectors. Thus establishing a perfect example for the region based development in our country; Kalam expressed his views on the requirements of quality leadership and healthy relationship between the regions. Innovative ideas are to be considered for the country’s welfare with ‘development’ as the main goal. Now the whole nation is all set to welcome the new region-based development along with the promise for a well developed nation.

In our former President’s view, India required quality leadership and the regions should share their infrastructure and knowledge among each other to reduce disparities among themselves. This, in turn, will help reduce conflicts between the states and thereby help in attaining the non-linear growth. The purpose is to ensure that the commonly- shared socio, economic and cultural virtues of the nation is fully realized without any dilution. Focus on the region-based development is on its way to make the dream come true, a developed India in the near future.