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Pranab Mukherjee in his acceptance speech on assumption of office as 13th President of India on Wednesday recalled his initial days in politics. Mukherjee said: "I have seen vast, perhaps unbelievable, changes during the journey that has brought me from the flicker of a lamp in a small Bengal village to the chandeliers of Delhi ." "I was a boy when Bengal was savaged by a famine that killed millions; the misery and sorrow is still not lost on me," he said. "We have achieved much in the field of agriculture, industry and social infrastructure; but that is nothing compared to what India , led by the coming generations, will create in the decades ahead," he added. President Mukherjee further asserted that 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 not 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 . What has brought us thus far, will take us further ahead," he said. Emphasising that India 's true story is the partnership of the people, Mukherjee said: " Our wealth has been created by farmers and workers, industrialists and service-providers, soldiers and civilians." "Our social harmony is the sublime co-existence of temple, mosque, church, gurudwara and synagogue; they are symbols of our unity in diversity," he added.

President Mukherjee recalls his initial days in politics