On Sunday, actress Vidya Balan was among the 127 people who were awarded the Padma Shri. In 2010, her colleague Saif Ali Khan received the same national honour. If you're wondering why these two Bollywood actors were deemed worthy of being given a national honour, you aren't alone.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal, an RTI activist from Delhi, has spent a lot of time trying to understand how the Padma awards are bestowed. "How can a 10-member committee decide on 100 or so awardees out of 125 crore people?" he said during a telephonic interview.
The Padma awards are bestowed by the Indian government every year on Republic Day. There are four tiers of honours: the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan, and, the most prestigious, the Bharat Ratna.
"I had always felt that the process for deciding the awardees was problematic," said Agrawal. Soon after the Right to Information Act came into force in 2005, he filed a petition about each award that had been granted from 2006, asking for the same data: the list of nominees, the members of the awards committee, the members of the government sub-committee that nominates people and the individual nominators.
He had to wait for the answers until 2011, but even then, the ministry of home affairs declined to reveal the names of individual nominators. So, Agrawal had to ask the central information commission for that data.
He found that the selection process starts in the last week of December, when a long list of nominees is prepared from recommendations by individuals and a government-appointed sub-committee. This list is then sent to intelligence agencies, which are supposed to verify the nominees' antecedents. A committee decides on the winners within a month, after which the awards are announced and conferred on Republic Day.
The process isn't without flaws. In one embarrassing case, said Agrawal, Arun Firodia, chairman of Kinetic India, was granted the Padma Shri award in 2012 even though he had defaulted on several bank loans. The intelligence agencies approved Firodia despite news reports and details available in the Credit Information Bureau's website that several banks had declared Firodia a willful defaulter.
In 2010, actor Saif Ali Khan was awarded the Padma Shri even though a case had been filed against him in 1998 for poaching black bucks. An RTI response revealed that Saif Ali Khan had been nominated by the awards committee, though the answer did not mention which member of the committee floated his name.
To make the process more transparent, Agarwal suggests that the secretary of the main opposition party be appointed to the awards committee so that dissenting views are better represented. He wants to extend this practice to the Bharat Ratna as well. Currently, the prime minister recommends up to three individuals for the Bharat Ratna to the president. Agrawal wants the opposition leader to also have a say in this, so that the country's highest civilian honour is not awarded on a political whimsy.
"South Indian film star MG Ramachandran was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously so that the Congress could have a better chance of winning the 1989 Lok Sabha election," he said.
The RTI activist has also asked for all the details about the awards and committees be put up on the website of the home affairs ministry so that it is open to public scrutiny.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal, an RTI activist from Delhi, has spent a lot of time trying to understand how the Padma awards are bestowed. "How can a 10-member committee decide on 100 or so awardees out of 125 crore people?" he said during a telephonic interview.
The Padma awards are bestowed by the Indian government every year on Republic Day. There are four tiers of honours: the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Vibhushan, and, the most prestigious, the Bharat Ratna.
"I had always felt that the process for deciding the awardees was problematic," said Agrawal. Soon after the Right to Information Act came into force in 2005, he filed a petition about each award that had been granted from 2006, asking for the same data: the list of nominees, the members of the awards committee, the members of the government sub-committee that nominates people and the individual nominators.
He had to wait for the answers until 2011, but even then, the ministry of home affairs declined to reveal the names of individual nominators. So, Agrawal had to ask the central information commission for that data.
He found that the selection process starts in the last week of December, when a long list of nominees is prepared from recommendations by individuals and a government-appointed sub-committee. This list is then sent to intelligence agencies, which are supposed to verify the nominees' antecedents. A committee decides on the winners within a month, after which the awards are announced and conferred on Republic Day.
The process isn't without flaws. In one embarrassing case, said Agrawal, Arun Firodia, chairman of Kinetic India, was granted the Padma Shri award in 2012 even though he had defaulted on several bank loans. The intelligence agencies approved Firodia despite news reports and details available in the Credit Information Bureau's website that several banks had declared Firodia a willful defaulter.
In 2010, actor Saif Ali Khan was awarded the Padma Shri even though a case had been filed against him in 1998 for poaching black bucks. An RTI response revealed that Saif Ali Khan had been nominated by the awards committee, though the answer did not mention which member of the committee floated his name.
To make the process more transparent, Agarwal suggests that the secretary of the main opposition party be appointed to the awards committee so that dissenting views are better represented. He wants to extend this practice to the Bharat Ratna as well. Currently, the prime minister recommends up to three individuals for the Bharat Ratna to the president. Agrawal wants the opposition leader to also have a say in this, so that the country's highest civilian honour is not awarded on a political whimsy.
"South Indian film star MG Ramachandran was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously so that the Congress could have a better chance of winning the 1989 Lok Sabha election," he said.
The RTI activist has also asked for all the details about the awards and committees be put up on the website of the home affairs ministry so that it is open to public scrutiny.
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