With so much success in sports, an Olympic bronze isn’t good enough for India
The colour of this medal isn't good enough for India's high sporting standards ?
The Padma Awards are given by the Government of India generally to Indian citizens to recognize their exceptional and distinguished contribution in various spheres of activity including the Arts, Education, Industry, Literature, Science, Sports, Social Service and public life. There are 4 of them – the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan, the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Shri in decreasing order of significance.
In 2009, two persons whose efforts were not found to be either exceptional or distinguished were 2008 Olympic bronze medal winners – Sushil Kumar and Vijender Kumar. However, Olympic gold medallist, Abhinav Bindra has been awarded with the third highest civilian award, the Padma Bhushan.
Previously, 2004 Olympic Silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore was conferred with the Padma Shri – the very next year in 2005. On the other hand 1994 Bronze medallist Leander Paes had to wait for 5 years to get his due. By then he had also won numerous grand slam titles and led India to some memorable Davis Cup triumphs – my guess is that the award was more a consequence of these than the Olympic effort. Another Olympic bronze medallist Karnam Malleswari was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999, much before her Olympic achievement in 2000. The only other individual bronze-medallist in the Olympics, Kashaba Jadhav, never received any of the Padma Awards.
It is very clear now that ‘just winning an Olympic bronze medal’ isn’t good enough to be considered Padma Award worthy. After all, we have had 5 of those in just 25 Olympic Games.
Somebody please tell this to Vijender and Sushil who are feeling hurt and angry after being ignored for the awards.
The government is not unreasonable. They have recognized all the exceptional sporting efforts of 2008 – like in the case of spin bowler spinner Harbhajan Singh. He has been rightly recognized for his ‘exceptional and distinguished’ effort of slapping a fellow Indian cricketer in front of the whole world.
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