Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a candid chat with Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath, making his podcast debut on the entrepreneur’s People by WTF series. During the podcast, he spoke about his unexpected journey in politics and how he deals with failures among other things.
“I am not someone who will spend his life crying over a setback… One has to take risks at every moment,” PM Modi said.
Citing the example of Chandrayaan-2, which failed at the last hurdle in 2019, the Prime Minister said that many people didn’t want him to go to the launch event.
“They said, ‘Sir, it is uncertain. Every country in the world has failed. They succeed only after the fourth or sixth attempt. What if something untoward happens?’ I said, ‘So what? Now, don’t I have any responsibility towards it? So I went,” he said.
“(Chandrayaan-2) crashed at the last moment. Everyone present there was worried. No one had the courage to inform the Prime Minister about it,” he added.
PM Modi recalled that he couldn’t sleep that night and decided to meet the team that worked on the mission before he left because “it was a big setback for the country”.
“I am not someone who will spend his life crying over a setback. I went in the morning and told all the scientists, ‘If there is a failure, then it is my responsibility’,” he said, adding he did everything to instil as much “confidence as I could in them. And Chandrayaan-3 was successful”.
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The mission control lost contact with the Chandrayaan-2 lunar module moments before its slated landing. Back at the ISRO headquarters in Bengaluru, K Sivan broke down. The Prime Minister, who had flown down to the southern city to watch the landing event, hugged and consoled Mr Sivan.
Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the moon on August 23, 2023, in a mission seen as crucial to lunar exploration and India’s standing as a space power.
The Prime Minister, during the podcast, also spoke about the lessons from the Chandrayaan-2 failure that he uses in politics.
“You see, taking risks in politics requires a lot of preparation. One has to take risks at every moment,” he said.
In the two-hour podcast, PM Modi also shared about his childhood, education, his journey in politics and how he handles anxiety.
