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POLITICAL DIARY
Inky, Pinky, Ponky…..
POLITICS OF PADMA AWARDS
By Poonam I Kaushish
New Delhi, January 22, 2008
“The next on the block is the Bharat Ratna followed by the
Padma awards. In the reckoning are: former Prime Minister
Vajpayee, Dalit icons Jagjivan Ram and Kanshi Ram, State
satraps DMK’s Karunanidhi, Orissa’s Biju Patnaik and Bihar’s
Karpoori Thakur, Jat leader Chaudhary Charan Singh. Hold your
breath, the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. The
bidding starts now…..And the Bharat Ratna goes to…..” This,
dear aam aadmi, is how the country’s highest civilian honour
is decided. A game of akar bakkar bambeh boh or inky, pinky,
ponky, have your pick. Either way it matters little. The
awards are all about darbari politricking!
Come 26 January eve, the story will be the same. The Roll of
Honour will be grandiosely announced. Many will applaud, some
will criticize and the remaining will sulk. The increased
tu-tu-mein-mein and lobbying by our netagan including a Prime
Minister-in-waiting’s ‘gratitude’ to his predecessor, state
satraps flexing their muscle and filial outpourings of
paternal love has yet again put a question mark on the highest
civilian award. The UPA Government may just give the Bharat
Ratna a miss, the seventh in a row.
Ever since it was instituted by India’s first President Dr
Rajendra Prasad on 2 January 1954, our founding fathers wanted
the Bharat Ratna be awarded to people of impeccable integrity,
extraordinary service towards advancement of art, literature
and science, and in recognition of public service. They also
advocated it be conferred sparingly for exceptional service to
the country.
Since Independence, only 40 persons from various fields,
mostly of high eminence, with some exceptions have been
honoured. During the Nehru era there were no problems as
eminent personalities with immense contributions were
conferred the Bharat Ratna. Tall leaders like C
Rajagopalachari, C V Raman and S Radhaksishnan were the first
ones to be given the award.
The nation applauded them and next year it was given to Dr
Bhawan Das, the 90-year-old engineer who had built the city of
Mysore. However, on 13th July 1977, the then Prime Minister
Morarji Desai discontinued these honours, which were later
restored by Indira Gandhi on 25th January 1980, during her
second term.
Some of the latter recipients like Sir M.Visweswaraya, Mother
Teresa, Vinobha Bhave, J.R.D.Tata, Satyajit Ray,
M.S.Subbalakshmi, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Amartya Sen, Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan and Nelson Mandela. Lata Mangeshkar and Ustad
Bismillah Khan were the last to receive the award in 2001.
However, controversies cropped up when former cinema star and
AIADMK supremo M.G.Ramachandran was awarded the Bharat Ratna
in 1988. Murmurs were also heard when former President
V.V.Giri, Congress President K.Kamaraj former Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi were given the award. True, they had made
contributions to the nation but it was felt that they were
being awarded with political motives rather than for stellar
credentials.
Unbelievable but true, the most important person, who befits
this award is missing. The Father of the Nation, Mahatma
Gandhi! Interestingly, the Bharat Ratna was conferred on
Subhash Chandra Bose posthumously in 1992, by the then Prime
Minister PV Narasimha Rao’s Government. But it regrettably got
embroiled in a controversy over his death and had to be
withdrawn.
Distressingly, the conferring of the Bharat Ratna stinks of
populism and vote-bank politics at its crassiest best. Dalit
stalwart BR Ambedkar was honoured by ‘Mandal’ Prime Minister V
P Singh in 1990, Jayaprakash Narayan was conferred the Bharat
Ratna in 1999 by Vajpayee and Mother Teresa by the Congress.
Why now? To help our netagan and their parties to garner votes
in subsequent elections.
The less said the better over the jostling for the other three
awards --- Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.
There is no dearth of award-seekers. Like every year, already
the Centre and State Governments have been besieged with
self-recommendations for the three categories of the Padma
awards and other State Governments award. The corridors of
power are witness to people lugging their resumes to concerned
Ministers and X, Y, Z’s who can help them get an award. All
stops are being pulled out, favours called and relatives and
friends pressed into service to put in a word.
Till date, the awards committee which shortlists the
nominations for the three awards and forwards them to the
Prime Minister, has received over 1,500 recommendations from
Union Ministries, States, MPs, MLAs, individuals and private
organizations over the last six months. The Bharat Ratna,
however, is decided by the Prime Minister, who if he wishes
may consult the President and the Leader of Opposition.
Sadly, over the years successive Governments have treated
these awards as favours to be bestowed in exchange of personal
loyalty while ignoring deserving people in civil society.
Never mind that it lowers the value, prestige and dignity of
the awards. Worse, the awards are trivialized to an extent
whereby conmen and fortune-tellers too can boast about being
the proud recipients.
Recall the 1960’s, when the then Defence Minister YB Chavan
secured a Padma Bhushan for his professor N.S.Phadke, a
popular Marathi writer of kitsch romances, even as senior and
more deserving littérateurs were left out. The 2001 list of
the Padma awards figured a relatively junior Mumbai vocalist
whose sole claim to glory was her ‘singing’ Vajpayee’s poems.
The politics of largesse continues unabated.
Given the notoriety these awards generate every year, some
feel these should be "scrapped". The selection process is all
wrong, merit is no longer the criteria and to top it all the
people have lost faith. Especially when those honoured refuse
the award on some pretext or the other. Instances include
historian Romilla Thapar, Kathak exponent Sitara Devi and
sarod maestro Vilayat Khan et al. Then there is the strange
case of the Assamese litterateur Kanaksen Deka who refused the
Padma Shri out of a respect for the highest Assamese State
civil awards he had received. His argument, it would discredit
the State awards which were for the same achievements.
Despite controversies, many feel the awards are necessary as a
form of national recognition for meaningful contribution to
society. But changes need to be made and the flaws rectified
in the basic selection process. Remember, last year the then
President Kalam sent back the awardees file to the Prime
Minister’s Office as there were grave irregularities in the
selection. Three names had been included without the approval
of the inter-ministerial committee and the final list had 12
names against which there were adverse reports of the
Intelligence Bureau.
Also, a glance of last year’s awardees list shows that the
awards are Delhi-centric. The majority of the awardees were
from States where the ruling Party at the Centre was in power
and there were only a handful from the Opposition-ruled
States. Out of the 10 selected for the Padma Vibhushan, Delhi
bagged 6, Haryana and Tamil Nadu one each and the rest to NRIs.
Again when it came to the Padma Bhushan, Congress-ruled Delhi
got 6, Communist Kerala and West Bengal got 6 each, NCP
dominated Maharashtra three and one each was bagged by Assam,
Mizoram, U.P. and Tamil Nadu. Of the Padma Shri, Delhi again
bagged 17, Maharashtra 9 and Tamil Nadu 8. Similarly the
Gandhi family fiefdom U. P got 5 along with Congress-ruled
Andhra. Uttarakhand again Congress-ruled got 4 whereas Kerala
and Karnataka three each.
Questionably, does the Government want us to believe that only
Centre-ruled States have deserving people? This is
unacceptable, untenable and anti-people. Also, is there a
curriculum in Padma scheme on fulfillment of which one
qualifies for higher degree? Orissa’s Kelucharan Mohapatra
bagged the Padma Shree in 1972, Padma Bhushan in 1989 and
Padma Vibhushan in 2000.
Scandalously, religion and castes too are being taken into
consideration while entertaining nominations for these titles.
The columns that are required to be filled up in the
nomination Form clearly include “Religion” and another
“Category”, asking whether the person belongs to the Scheduled
Caste or Scheduled Tribe or Other backward Castes or General
Castes. This goes against the tenets of national integration.
What next? Clearly, the cesspool of awards needs to be
cleansed. Greater transparency and accountability should get
precedence over politicians’ personal whims and Ministers
should be kept out of the selection process. Two, the
committee should include people with unimpeachable credentials
and the awards should be weighed carefully on the scale of
creative freedom and professional integrity. Three, there
should be uniformity in the selection from the States and
religion and caste should find no place.
In sum, the time has come to cry a halt to competitive ‘awardmanship.’
Specially when our national pride, honour and self-respect is
at stake. Awards or nominations must be in keeping with their
laudable objective of acknowledging the truly distinguished
service to the nation. Not given to those who live for the
moment and revel in the glory of yesteryears. Nor to the
politricking darbaris! ---- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
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