New Delhi: Terming the war against terrorism the ”fourth World War,” President Pranab Mukherjee today said India would not be deflected from its mission by ”the noxious practitioners of terror.”
”We are in the midst of a fourth world war; the third was the Cold War, but it was very warm in Asia, Africa and Latin America till it ended in the early 1990s. The war against terrorism is the fourth; and it is a world war because it can raise its evil head anywhere in the world.
India has been on the frontlines of this war long before many other recognized its vicious depth or poisonous consequences,”Mr Mukherjee said in an address after being sworn in as President in the Central Hall of Parliament.
Expressing India’s determination not to let terrorists sway it from its goals, he said,”I am proud of the valour, conviction and steely determination of our Armed Forces as they have fought this menace on our borders; of our brave police forces as they have met the enemy within; and of our people, who have defeated the terrorist trap by remaining calm in the face of extraordinary provocation.
India is content with itself, and driven by the will to sit on the high table of prosperity. It will not be deflected in its mission by noxious practitioners of terror.”
Mr Mukherjee stressed on making elimination of poverty as a national mission.”Our national mission must continue to be what it was when the generation of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Ambedkar and Maulana Azad offered us a tryst with destiny: to eliminate the curse of poverty, and create such opportunities for the young that they can take our India forward by quantum leaps. There is no humiliation more abusive than hunger.
Trickle-down theories do n
ot address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary  of modern India,” he said.
