Tanjil Md.

Masum

ID: 158

1.1: Brief Biography of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Early Life

APJ Abdul Kalam was born into a poor Tamil Muslim family in the pilgrimage town of
Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, on October 15, 1931. His mother, Ashiamma, was a housewife and
his father, Jainulabdeen, was an imam of a local mosque and a boat owner. He was the youngest
in the family with four elder brothers and a sister.

Career

As A Scientist

In 1960, he graduated from the ‘Madras Institute of Technology,’ and joined as a scientist at the
‘Aeronautical Development Establishment,’ after becoming a member of the ‘Defense Research
and Development Service.’ Kalam also worked under the eminent space scientist Vikram
Sarabhai while he was a part of ‘INCOSPAR’ committee. Kalam was transferred to the ‘Indian
Space Research Organization (ISRO)’ in 1969. He became the project head of the country’s
foremost Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III). In July 1980, SLV-III deployed the ‘Rohini’
satellite successfully near-earth orbit under Kalam’s leadership.

As President

In 2002, Kalam was chosen the Presidential nominee by the ruling National Democratic Alliance
(NDA), and he was elected the President. He became the 11th President of India on July 25, 2002
and served the position till July 25, 2007.

As An Academician

After the end of his presidential term, he became a visiting professor at the ‘Indian Institute of
Management (IIM), Ahemdabad,’ ‘Indian Institute of Management ((IIM), Indore,’ and the
‘Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Shillong.’ He served as a professor of Aerospace
Engineering at Anna University, as chancellor at the ‘Indian Institute of Space Science and
Technology Thiruvananthapuram,’ an honorary fellow of ‘Indian Institute of Science (IISc),
Bangalore,’ and an adjunct at a number of other research and academic institutes across the
country. He also taught technology at ‘Anna University,’ and ‘Banaras Hindu University,’ and
taught information technology at the ‘International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT),
Hyderabad.’

Death
Kalam went to IIM Shillong to deliver a lecture on ‘Creating a Livable Planet Earth,’ on July 27,
2015. While climbing a flight of stairs, he expressed some discomfort, but made his way to the
auditorium. Only five minutes into the lecture, around 6:35pm IST, he collapsed in the lecture
hall. He was taken to ‘Bethany Hospital’ in a critical condition. He was kept in the intensive care
unit but lacked signs of life. At 7:45pm IST, he was declared dead due to cardiac arrest.

1.2: “Wings of fire” book review and summary

Written by Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, honorable President of India. ‘Wings of Fire’ is an
autobiography capable of inspiring even a common man into becoming a technologist. A well
composed novel which revolves around the life of Mr. Kalam a renowned scientist as he shares
his experiences and the minutest of details of his life. I like the way the book has been put
together along with the delicate facts of his personal life. His family background, the pain and
suffering he went through and recollected himself is commendable. The day I finished reading
this book, such an influential personality impacted me very deeply and it gave me a glimpse of
how the power of positive thinking can help achieve all odds.

This autobiography comprises of a balance of details of the technological and political

challenges faced to prosper in its aeronautical and space program. It is also a success story of
Dr.Kalam’s participative management practices. Also, it gives an insight into the lives of Hindus
and Muslims of India and their relationships among each other and among multi religious
communities in India.

Wings of Fire” is an account of a young boy who tries to achieve his dreams beating all odds.
The story emphasizes the importance of family, relatives and friends in helping achieve each
other’s goals and turning dreams to reality. It teaches us to become a patriotic citizen of our
country shown in the book as a determinant India and countless effort of its scientists in
achieving superiority in aeronautical, space and rocket technology.

This book offers an important lesson of finding success from failures of Indian space and rocket
infrastructural programs. A good presentation of the role of other renowned scientists moulding
our country’s future. This book is full of information and is a recommended choice for every
student, because this book has the influence and power to motivate a person to stand out in life.
“Wings of Fire” is a unique model of accomplishing one’s goals, while fulfilling the promise to
its country.

Considering that this book comes from a scientist, this book does have little scientific narration.
SLV, Geo satellite, composite material, mechanical engineering and such things. The journey
itself always has technical errors especially when it’s scientific in nature. Abdul Kalam, like the
man himself forced his will to victory over failures, fears and disappointments.

At the core, the book is about the great Indian dream. A wish that all the founding fathers of a
country have, a wish fulfilled by Abdul Kalam.
A country which is divided by religion and caste. A country which has a corrupt political system
and where money rules, Abdul Kalam still made millions of citizens of India a proud nation.
Aftermath

1.3: An assessment of “Wings of Fire” on the basis of quality control criteria of

handling documentary sources

Handling documentary sources are not different from those applied to other areas of social
research. In every case, data must be handled scientifically. Scott (1990) has formulated quality
control criteria for handling documentary sources. These are: authenticity, credibility,
representativeness and meaning. Authenticity refers to whether the evidence is genuine and
from implacable source; credibility refers to whether the evidence is typical of its kind;
representativeness refers to whether the documents consulted are representative of the totality of
the relevant documents, and meaning refers to whether the evidence is clear and comprehensible.
According to Scott (1990: 6), these “criteria of authenticity, credibility, representativeness and
meaning should not be regarded as distinct phases in assessing the quality of documentary
sources.” They should not be applied in a rigid and formalistic way as well, the criteria should
rather be seen as all interdependent and the researcher can not adequately use one criterion to the
exclusion of others.

1.3.1: Authenticity
Authenticity refers to the truthfulness of origins; evidence is genuine, attributions, commitments,
sincerity, devotion, and intentions. Authenticity of an evidence for analysis is the fundamental
criterion in any research. The researcher therefore has a duty and a responsibility to ensure that
the document he is consulting is genuine and has integrity. It is the same way as interviewer must
be sure of the identity of the interviewee, or the participant observer must be sure that he is in the
right place and that the activities he is observing are not stage managed for his benefit, but the
‘normal’ activity he intended to go and observe. There are, however, many instances where
documents may not be what they purport or appear to be. For example wills, legal documents,
diaries and letters can be forged or falsified, and even literary works might be attributed to authors
who did not write them (Platt 1981). It places an enormous responsibility on the researcher to
satisfy them that the documents being analyzed are not forgeries and indeed what they purport
to be. Documents, therefore, should not be taken for granted. According to Platt (1981)
circumstances may arise that necessitate a close scrutiny of a document. Such circumstances
include the following:

1. When the document does not make sense or has obvious errors;
2. When there are internal inconsistencies in terms of style, content and so on;
3. When there are different versions of the same document;
4. When the version available is derived from a dubious, suspicious or unreliable
secondary source; and
5. When the document has been in the hands of a person or persons with vested interest in
a particular reading of the text.
After establishing the authenticity of a document, the researcher must also authenticate the
authorship of the document, that is, verify that the name inscribed on the document is that of the
author. Instances exist where authors have been incorrectly named, or where documents were
falsely presented as being the work of certain known personalities, such as - the Hitler Diaries
(Scott, 1990).

After carefully read the “wings of fire” it has been said that it concludes data which doesn’t have
many errors and follow the criteria of authenticity of document. This book has truthfulness of
origins; evidence is genuine, attributions, commitments, sincerity, devotion, and intentions. The
writer of this book writes down all the topics that had been said by Dr. Abdul Kalam himself. So,
there is no dubious, suspicious or unreliable secondary source was used in this autobiography.

1.3.2: Credibility
Credibility refers to the objective and subjective components of the believability of a source or
message, whether the evidence is free from error and distortion. According to Wikipedia (2009),
credibility has two key components: trustworthiness and expertise, which both have objective
and subjective components. Trustworthiness is based more on subjective factors, but can include
objective measurements such as established reliability. In the same way, expertise can be
subjectively perceived, but also includes relatively objective characteristics of the source or
message (e.g., credentials, certification or information quality). Secondary components of
credibility include the source dynamism (charisma) and physical attractiveness.

According to Scott (1990), the question of credibility should concern the extent to which an
observer is sincere in the choice of a point of view and in the attempt to record an accurate
account from that chosen standpoint. The researcher must ascertain that the documents they are
consulting are free from distortion, prepared independently and beforehand and most
importantly, the documents are not produced for the benefit of the researcher, or deliberately
altered to mislead the researcher. The need to establish credibility of documents is no less
important in documentary research than in other research methods, such as survey methods,
where the respondent’s credibility in an interview depends on the extent to which the views
expressed are made honestly, regardless of the fact that respondents could have erred in fact or in
judgment of the situation. Some researchers might rely on newspapers as the sources of their
information. Whilst newspapers can be used as documentary sources, it is advisable to ignore
the reporters’ comments and opinions on events and occurrences, and to concentrate only on
factual press statements or interviews. Any newspaper commentary used must be
acknowledged, but not passed as fact.

There is always a possibility that an incorrect entry could be made in a document. For instance,
some figures in the Labour Statistics Bulletins do not always add up. However, this should be
regarded as a genuine error and not a fraudulent activity to mislead the public. In other words, a
genuine error does not undermine the credibility of the sources, especially as it can be detected
and corrected. With regard to consultancy reports, it is also relatively easy to establish their
authenticity because these documents are not acquired from unreliable sources. They are
collected from the consumers of the reports such as government.
After carefully observe the “wings of fire” it has been said that it concludes data which have
proper credibility among readers and criticizers. In this book the writer was is sincere in the
choice of a point of view and in the attempt to record an accurate account from that chosen
standpoint. In addition, this document is free from distortion, prepared independently and
beforehand and most importantly, the document was not produced for the benefit of the
researcher, or deliberately altered to mislead the researcher.

1.3.3: Representativeness
The question of representativeness applies more to some documents than to others.
Representativeness refers to whether the evidence is typical of its kind or not, to the extent of its
un-typicality known. Documents, such as the Household Income and Expenditure Surveys, are
prepared by professional statisticians using generally accepted sampling frames and random
selection procedures. This is clear from the methodology section of these reports. The fact that
some of the findings might actually be embarrassing to the government testifies to their
representativeness and authenticity. But as to whether the documents consulted are representative
of the totality of the entire relevant documents pertaining to a specific issue under investigation
is difficult to say. This is particularly the case with official government documents.

As Wings of fire is prepared by professional writer along with Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam himself.
So, there is no possibility of embarrassing findings or data in this autobiography. Furthermore,
this book was prepared by professional autobiography writer using generally accepted sampling
frames and random selection procedures.

1.3.4: Meaning
Meaning refers to whether the evidence is clear and comprehensible. The ultimate purpose of
examining documents is to arrive at an understanding of the meaning and significance of what
the document contains (Scott 1990). However, what documents contain can have either a literal
or face value meaning and an interpretative meaning. Another important point to be considered
in the use of documentary sources is how to decide which inference to make from a document
about matters other than the truth of its factual assertions (Platt, 1981). To this end the researcher
may augment documentary data by in-depth interviews with a few key informants, that is, people
who are familiar with and or knowledgeable about the social phenomenon under investigation.
The tradition or conventional way amongst social scientists is the other way round to augment
social surveys and in–depth interviews with documentary research! But the interviews can help
one get the feel of what is happening through the perceptions of these key informants, something
that a researcher may not deduce or easily infer from documents. Interviews with key informants
can assist a researcher to subject the documents to additional and even more rigorous
interrogation. Interviews can help capture certain perceptions, attitudes, views and feelings, and
the meanings and the interpretations that people have given to certain events and situations, and to
detect any conflicting attitudes and interpretations of the same events and situations (Hakim,
1987).
Needless to say, these developments place extra burden on the user of documentary sources
when it comes to establishing the authenticity, credibility, representativeness and meaning of
documentary sources.

After thoroughly observed the autobiography called “Wings of Fire”, which contains
meaningful writings. It doesn’t have any literal or interpretive meaning. Here factual assertions
were not used in detail. On the other hand, the interviewee himself checked the book deliberately
so that no conflicting attitudes and interpretations of the same events and situations were affected
the book.

1.4: Discourse Analysis of “Wings of Fire”

To embark on defining discourse analysis one would inevitably tackle two divergent approaches
to language in general and discourse in particular: the formal approach and the functional
approach. Schiffrin combines both approaches when designating DA as ‘the study of language
use above and beyond the sentence’.

The first trend in defining DA is a formal or structural trend. In this paradigm, DA is seen as
the exploration of language use by focusing on pieces larger than sentences. Schiffrin (1994)
elucidates that discourse is merely a higher level in the hierarchy: morpheme, clause and
sentence (as stated originally by Zellig Harris in his first reference to DA); she also explains
that the pursuit of DA is to depict the internal structural relationships that tie the units of
discourse to each other: to describe formal connectedness within it.

The second trend is functional in perspective: it is not so much concerned with intra-
sentential relations as much as with language use. Brown and Yule's (1983) conception seems
to be compatible with this paradigm:

The analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such, it cannot be
restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions
which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs.

From above description “Wings of fire” not so much concerned with intra-sentential relations
as much as with language use as well as , it cannot be restricted to the description of
linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions which these forms are designed to
serve in human affairs.

1.5: Content Analysis of “Wings of Fire”

content analysis is “a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts
(or other meaningful matter) to the context of their use. The notion of inference is especially
important in content analysis. The researcher uses analytical constructs, or rules of inference, to
move from the text to the answers to the research questions. The two domains, the texts and the
context, are logically independent, and the researcher draws conclusions from one independent
domain (the texts) to the other (the context).

Content analysis involves specialized procedures that, at least in quantitative content analysis,
allow for replication. The findings of a good study using quantitative content analysis,
therefore, do not rely solely on the authority of the researchers doing the content analysis for
their accept-ability. They can be subjected to independent tests and techniques for judging
their validity and reliability. Indeed, the extent to which validity and reliability can be judged
are significant issues in evaluating a research methodology, and they are considered in
subsequent sections in relation to both quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

In contrast with quantitative content analysis, qualitative content analysis flows from a
humanistic, not a positivistic, tradition. It is inductive. Qualitative content analysis may
yield testable hypotheses but that is not its immediate purpose. Replacing the hypotheses are
foreshadowing questions, that is, open questions that guide the research and influence the data that
are gathered. In qualitative content analysis, however, the text plays a slightly different role in
that, as the researcher reads through the data and scrutinizes them closely to identify concepts
and patterns, some patterns and concepts may emerge that were not foreshadowed but that are,
nevertheless, important aspects to consider. In that case, the researcher may legitimately alter his
interests and research questions to pursue these new patterns.

In “Wings of fire” the writer also carefully used content analysis tool for accept-ability of the
readers. In addition, the writer researcher reads through the data and scrutinizes them closely to
identify concepts and patterns, as some patterns and concepts may emerge that were not
foreshadowed.

1.6: Conclusion

Wings of fire is an autobiography of former president Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam (Avul Pakir
Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam) and his wordings are analyzed through john scotts criteria for
assessing the quality of documents and I do not find any lacking based on this criteria. So, it has
been understood that Wings of fire is an autobiography which give its readers valid and authentic
information about the respected person.