Inky, Pinky, Ponky…..

POLITICS OF PADMA AWARDS

By Poonam I Kaushish

New Delhi, 19 January 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)