The wilting Padma

Too much democracy has devalued a feudal practice

The Right to Information (RTI) Act has done a lot of good things for Indian democracy, but it seems to have done some bad things too. For example, making public the list of 1,300 nominations for this year’s annual Padma awards, the final list being announced by the government on the eve of the Republic Day, takes a large part of the shine and mystique off the awards. Time was when recipients of the awards and their family, friends and admirers would all celebrate the award and rejoice in the national acclaim. Today, however, the procedure has been made so transparently bureaucratic that it must feel like being selected for a government job! To a great extent, this state of affairs has been brought upon the Padma by its dilution over the years. It was always the case that while these awards were given in large part to distinguished persons, the sycophants of the dispensation in power and an assortment of wheelers and dealers also managed to get their names listed. While those in the know in the corridors of power knew who the deserving were and who the undeserving, innocent citizens across the country would more often than not presume that all those honoured with the Padma were a deserving lot. Interestingly, while the awards rules prohibit awardees from using the honour as a prefix or even a suffix to their names, many often do. It is the rare Indian who declines a Padma on the grounds that her professional worth need not be certified by the state and it was enough if a relevant professional body honours.

In recent years, the outright politicisation of the Padma awards, under successive governments, and the selection of several persons of dubious distinction, brought the courts into the picture and as often the courts suggested a hamhanded way out. On top of the bureaucratic system put in place by courts, which privileged a few government officials and their chosen few non-governmental personages, the RTI Act has stripped the awarding process bare. We now know the names of all the worthies who have been nominated. In due course, the RTI Act may also make public the names of the nominators. From the list of 1,300 nominations that have passed initial scrutiny, about 120 to 130 will be selected, after proper vetting by intelligence and security agencies. Income tax authorities have not yet been brought into the picture, but some day they may get a say too. Given that the final selection is still made by an assortment of government officials and their chosen few, it is still not clear if the truly distinguished recipients of these awards would still feel proud to be named. All governments give away such awards and more often than not the recipients are always a mix of the deserving and the demanding. So, there is nothing specially wrong either with the Padma process or the outcome, apart from the fact that the award is being stripped of its mystique. An excess of populism and patronage politics seem to have hurt the Padma awards as much as their original inspiration — the British monarch’s birthday honours.