Sunil Sethi: Why not scrap the Padma awards?

AL FRESCO

When the republic was young one of the more diverting spectacles of Republic Day every year was the nation's roll of honour, the giving out of the Padma awards. It was a limited merit list, more or less everyone on it was recognisable and there was a value attached to the achievement of those honoured for their services to the nation.

It could be one of the perils of a restless democracy""with its ever-growing list of lobbies and interest groups clamouring for recognition""but nothing has become more devalued in the last couple of decades than the list of the nation's highest civilian honours.

For one, it seems to grow longer every passing year. This year the number of Padma awardees is up to 106 from 96 last year and 86 in 2004. For another, the media seems rather confused about who is who and follows by rote the government's peculiar categories""both Charles Correa and Nandan Nilekani are credited not for contribution to architecture or building a highly regarded corporation but for promoting "science and engineering". Shahnaz Hussain, the purveyor of herbal cosmetics, receives a Padma Shri under "trade and industry" and Fatma Zakaria, the journalist, for her contribution to "literature and education" in Maharashtra. And so on.

A closer scrutiny of many of those honoured in this puzzling and unaccountable list shows that all the UPA government's darlings, including no doubt its favourite dentist, have got in. The same was true of Padma winners under the NDA government or dispensations before that. Up to a point political affiliations are rewarded in honours lists the world over. But the extent to which political partisanship infects the Padma awards makes a joke of the idea of excellence. For example, a growing quota of retired civil servants is in each year, for no other achievement than they did the government's bidding in troubled times. Former chief justices are in, too, but it is not clear whether for contribution to jurisprudence or for merely adorning the seat.

What has really gone wrong is that a sarkari-style quota system has taken over the selection process, now ruled by category, region, religion and gender rather than judicious choices made through elimination and consensus. If we had a surgeon last time, why not a paediatrician this year? What about a hakim""doesn't traditional medicine deserve recognition? Are there enough women from Maharashtra? Or Muslims from Kerala? Is modern art getting its due at the cost of tribal art? Are there enough social workers to fill the "Social Work" slot? And what about Bollywood?

As in most years, there are people on this year's list whom no one has ever heard of and no one is likely to""ever again. Sitting alongside the great and good are winners with sadly spurious credentials. There are professional hangers-on, people who have got on in Delhi by lobbying the right ministers and bureaucrats. Many of them, having won the Padma Shri prize, have spent a decade or more aiming for the next best thing, the Padma Bhushan or Padma Vibhushan. As a result, many of the same names keep recurring down the years. Luckily, there was no Bharat Ratna awarded this year but the public disputes that break out over the Big Prize have acquired a special notoriety.

There is also a growing quota in the distinguished foreigners' category though why Sheikh Abdul Rahman Bin Abdullah Al-Mahmoud of Qatar is a deserving candidate for the Padma Shri under "Public Affairs" this year may be worth knowing. Given the rate at which the numbers and categories are growing, maybe the Padma awards will soon spread their influence around the globe""a prize each for each continent, country and race of the world.

Is there any hope that the Padma awards can be streamlined? It seems not. So why shouldn't they be scrapped altogether?