Irving Wallace, in his vastly infotaining novel, The Prize, points to, in passing at places, how the Nobel Prize, since its inception by Alfred Nobel, has created heartburn and resentment. The winners, or their families in the case of a posthumous award, resent that the recognition ought to have come during the lifetime of the one decorated now, and, in the case of a live award, it should have come much earlier. The Nobel awarded to single achievements also causes heartburn among scientists, who rightly aver that such awards give a short shrift to the continuing work done by other scientists in the field in the past. In science, it is always work-in-progress till one fine morning the one who consummates research to perfection often rushes to the patent office to be recognised as the original inventor. And in case of joint winners, each views the other as an impostor and usurper. Be that as it may.

In the Indian context, both the Bharat Ratna and the Republic Day eve Padma Awards have been controversial, with the critics condemning the politicisation of the awards. Pandit Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, have been accused of awarding Bharat Ratna to themselves, as it were. In this context, it would be useful to recall the self-abnegation by prominent independence movement leader and India's first minister of education, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who declined the Padma honour, arguing that those who were on selection committees for national honours should not themselves receive them. That, at the end of the day, he received a posthumous........

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