IinSociety

In 2010 almost 847(68.7%) million people in our country lived on less than $2 a day, of which an estimated 400(32.7%) million are BPL surviving on less than $1.25 a day. In 2011 Global Hunger Index report our country is only one of the three nations whose GHI has increased between 1996and 2011. India is placed at an abysmal 136 th rank in UN Human Development Index, 94 th out of 119 in the world hunger index. We house highest number of malnourished people in the world at 230 million and a whopping 43% of India’s children below 5 are malnourished (that’s 46% of world’s total)! A few more facts, the average annual income of India- US$ 619, China- US$ 439, South Korea- US$ 770. Can’t digest it, well its true, or was, in 1947. These are the incomes at the time of independence. We were ahead of China and comparable to South Korea. The same figures changed drastically by 1999, India –US$ 1,818, China-US$ 3,259 and South Korea-US$ 13,317. While these two nations changed from dev...

Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award that can be bestowed upon by the Republic of India. It is awarded for performance of highest order in any field of endeavor. I would like to stress on the word ‘any’, as it is a recent addition so that a sportsperson can receive the award too. If you look at the past recipients of the award, it makes you wonder, where does Mr.Tendulkar fit on a list that features independent India’s first president, first education minister, chairman of the constitution drafting committee, four nobel laureates (including the likes of Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa), music pioneers like Lata Mangeshkar and Bismillah Khan, JRD Tata, APJ Abdul Kalam, etc. On a first glance, of course he doesn’t! One might argue that others didn’t contribute in their respective fields as much as SRT did for Indian cricket. But still, it’s just a game and he is just another sportsperson who scaled heights, that others didn’t think was possible. Hell, he achieved t...