Tag Archive for 'civilian'

Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award has become a political football this season. It all seems to have started when Jyoti Basu was proposed by the communists (and agreed to by the Congress) for the award. Then the BJP pitched in with a demand for A. B. Vajpayee. Pretty soon every party started demanding one for their own leader. Some pretty obscure names have been put forward.

Its safe to say we won’t have a Bharat Ratna awardee this year because of the political controversy. Ditto for the last seven years.

I’d like to nominate someone for the Bharat Ratna myself: Dr. Manmohan Singh.

It was Manmohan Singh who almost singlehandedly unleashed India in the early 1990s by undertaking economic reforms. He abolished industrial licensing, brought down taxes and duties and tamed the bureacracy (somewhat). The energy, enthusiasm and change that we see today is because Indians can conduct business without government inspectors getting in at every point. That is Manmohan Singh’s legacy. The seeds of 9%+ annual GDP growth rate that we see today were sown while Manmohan Singh was finance minister in the Narasimha Rao government of the 1990s.

I think Dr. Manmohan Singh is far more deserving of the award than many on the current rooster. Many got the award purely because they happened to be born in the right family or had the right politico-religious-caste credentials. Their contribution to India has been quite minimal.

Its unlikely that a sitting prime-minister would get the award. So I propose that he gets the award a year or two after he retires!

What do you think?