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"India has wonderful talented people and they deserve to be recognised," Lord Professor Bhiku Parikh, a Padma Bhushan awardee said at a function organised at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, UK, to felicitate Padma Bhushan and Padma Shree recipients Lord Khalid Hameed and John Marr respectively.
Parikh said India, with a population of over 1.1 billion people gives only 122 awards every year while Britain, with just over 60 million population gives away 18,000 awards.
The event was held as part of Republic Day celebrations and was attended by High Commissioner of India to the UK Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, who described Lord Hameed and Marr as "luminaries of Bhavan".
Referring to the progress India has made during the last 60 years since it became a Republic, Mukherjee said, "We will not barter away our liberty for any temporary quick fix or safety and we are proud of being an open society."
The High Commissioner condemned the terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26 2008 and said "certain bigoted men, who cannot tolerate the fact that the nation is wedded to secularism, pluralism and democracy had launched the attack and regardless of the slaughter of innocent, they will fail."
Speaking on the occasion, Lord Hameed, former Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Cromwell Hospital in London, said the recognition he received from the motherland was "special" for him.
Lord Hameed, who had received Padma Shree in 1992, said "I am looking forward to receiving the Padma Bhushan from the President of India."
82-year-old Marr, UK's most eminent carnatic music theorist and specialist in Tamil Literature, said "I deeply appreciate the honour done to me by the President and people of India through this signal honour."
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I think the system is more conservative and less transparent. They will wait to the point where the recepient can't care about it. Notice when they gave Bharat Ratna to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, 50 years after he died.
The system of giving awards in India has degenerated into a farce of sorts.There are a lot of outstanding personalities who more than deserve to be honoured,there are an equal number of undeserving people for whom excuses have to be sought to bring them on the honours list. The truth of the matter is that there are not many deserving candidates around and it makes little sense to give awards as political favours. Let us be honest.If India had a lot deserving people it would be living on a different level.
Awards must not be judged according to the population but by the number of politicians. It is a well known fact that all the awards at national and state levels are decided by politicians (and are often given to people who may not even be remotely connected with the field for which the award is given). Therefore, seeing the number of politicians, the number looks justified.
Indian system is not designed for excellence, it is designed for mediocre. People are discouraged from becoming crative or articulate their views. This is reflected in presentation of Indian cases by Indian diplomats world over. Compared to Indian diplomats Pakistani diplomats are able to articulate their country's position with finesse. so it is not surprising that only 122 awards have been received by Indians.
More awards may be needed to recognize the good work being done by Indians but the manner of choosing the awardees also needs to be looked into. For instance, most awards meant to be given to teachers are actually grabbed by principals of schools who rarely if ever enter a classroom. The casual way of nominating peopel results in awards being returned for the flimiest of reasons.Noted comunist returned his award to protest an attack on Golden temple while retired armyment recently returned their awards over dissatisfaction with pension. National awards must be given to those who value them and would not trade them for monetary gains.