dear all,
i read with great interest in the latest ezine the article on whether
sachin should be given the bharat ratna.
frankly , i feel it is not such an issue for people to be concerned about especially when the country is going through such a major financial crisis -- our sovereign rating has gone down, there is all round inflation, even though our children earn more than what we did in our times, their salaries seem like pocket money from their employers and not salaries.
the population of senior citizens is going up and there is no state welfare or health schemes for them as in many of the western nations. whatever health scheme exists is only for govt employees and its administered pathetically with virtually no real benefit to them. there is no hedge against inflation for the aging population as in the usa through social security benefits. where does our income tax payments go? do they fill up the coffers of unscruplous contractors who are in league with politicians who build sub standard infrastructure facilities for the population.
government is seriously obsessed with this growing population of
sr citizens, their incomes are a pittance on which they have to live on, bank deposits earn peanuts as interest for them to live on, cost of borrowing is high, real estate sector is in a jam, in delhi itself
i see hundreds and hundreds of flats in high rise buildings lying vacant because people don't have the money to buy them, the builders dont want to lower prices because they have formed a cartel, fuel prices veggy prices and grocery prices are skyrocketing every day ( basics such as onions, tomatoes , potatoes and pulses such as dal are becoming prohibitive in costs ). unprecedented
food inflation in the last two years.
given this scenario, we all need to debate on how to fix these every day problems. govt talks but doesn't do anything. i cant think of a single measure , except crumbs it has thrown in the budget, for sr citizens welfare. there is going to be a massive gap between the 60 plus and under 40s in a five year or 10 year time frame. government has absolutely no clue how its going to fix the void that will be created by the exit of skilled and experienced manpower which is all reaching 60 plus.
is govt or private sector going to create a pool or reservoir of the
exiting talent for use of the nation so that the under 40's, happy at the exit of sr people, because it clears their avenues for promotion ( my apologies to under 40s, not all of them think along these lines), and left with people to reinvent the wheel again and not
build upon it.
in my opinion ,should all awards be abolished forthwith ( the bjp govt or jp govy took this decision some time ago) because it iscriminated one individual against another. or is that an extreme. the govt awards and the private awards are all becoming a farce, one close to the govt or political big Whig gets it, hundreds of citizens doing good work to society but not tom tomming it or getting into newspapers, remain unrecognized.
i am a great fan of sachin tendulkar, his achievements are monumental in the field of cricket, a game which is now so commercial that the purists are losing all respect for this game ( t20, ipl etc). they came as an answer to people who said cricket was not as exciting as football or hockey and not as paying as tennis. it has overtaken all sports and focus and attention because of the excitement it provides and the money it generates for the players and the organisers. and the moolah for the fixers ( those who fix matches). and the diversion for the watchers from their day to day problems. a great national past time , great national diversion.
bharat ratna is a coveted award but more often its given to politicians than social achievers or intellectuals or thinkers who can change the society or the country. i have no intention of creating a controversy by listing the political awardees. one argument is if these politicians can get the bharat ratna, why not people like sachin tendulkar, he has brought name and honour to the nation by excelling in a manner no indian has ever excelled.
but the flip side is that the very same achievements has also made him a ommercial excellence , reportedly he is sitting on a corpus of rs 1,000 crore earned through endorsements from products pumped into the market by money making corporates who care dam all for the society. i see nothing wrong in people turning their achievements into commercial enterprises also because what is life all about -- earning profit for oneself to provide a better future . but this should not reach personal aggrandisement causing heartburns in society against the under privileged.
my simple question to the " give sachin bharat ratna" award lobby is :1) has sachin given back to society what he earned from it ? just as warren buffet ( he is a financial maverick) and bill gates and others. even rajni kanth gives a lot back to society and workers around him through philanthrophy, i am told. so why not sachin?
i dont know of any, if i am ignorant about it please enlighten me. if he has and benefited millions of Indians by his charity, pls go ahead and give him the bharat ratna . he has already got the awards he deserves from his avenues of sports and sporting bodies and institutions.
2) i feel the ramon Magsaysay award is good in the sense that it has recognised indians which indian administration had not recognised because they did not have the political pull for the awards. some of the ramon Magsaysay award winners have been awarded later by the indian government. paradox. unrelated example, attenborough gets the oscar and knighthood first and then india decides to give him padma bhushan, it took a foreigner to put gandhi on the international scenario through the monumental movie. no indian film maker thought of it on the world scale. a foreigner might make a film on indira gandhi or jawaharlal nehru ( both bharat ratnas) some time from now and he will get all international awards and the govt will give the padma vibhshan to him.
3) Awards should not be controlled by government but administered by independent free thinking bodies with supervisory control. Otherwise only politicians will qualify for the bharat ratna all the time. more people with political connnections get the padma vibushans and padma sri.
4) should awards be abolished to make all indians feel equal . or is it an extreme step.
i think its worth debating.
cheers
--
*TN Ashok
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