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Celebrating Hope: A Look into 2021
Padma Shri Awardees
3-min read | November 14, 2021
“On paper, these honours are given for meritorious contributions to society and national interest. But in reality, the state confers these honours upon associates both within and beyond the government – quite often irrespective of the significance of their contributions,” says Rajan Laad for NewsLaundry.
The Padma Awards started in the 1950s, were often conferred upon social workers, bureaucrats, journalists, artists who were active promoters of the government policies and were urban, affluent people. This doesn’t mean they were unworthy of their recognition but oftentimes grassroot level activists were ignored to make space for the urban awardees. The new process of selection which was introduced in 2017, ended the practice of ministers recommending names for the Padma awards. Instead, it was opened up for citizens to make recommendations online.
In its most recent ceremony, some of the highest civilian honours, the Padma Awards, were conferred upon 119 recipients, including 29 women and 1 trans individual. Of the 119, we cover brief profiles of those who bore a strong influence on us and whose work resonates with the fabric of our magazine.
From grassroot activism to conservation, Tulsi Gowda, a tribal woman in her 70s from Karnataka was granted the Padma Shri award for her contribution to the protection of the environment. She belongs to the Halakki indigenous tribe in Karnataka. She is known as the ‘Encyclopedia of the Forest’ because of her extensive knowledge of diverse species of plants and herbs. Her work as an environmentalist includes planting more than 30,000 saplings. At the nursery, Gowda was responsible for taking care of the seeds that were to be grown and harvested at the Karnataka Forestry Department, and she specifically cared for the seeds that were meant to be a part of the Agasur seedbed.
During her entire time at this nursery, she contributed and worked directly to combat afforestation efforts by the forest department by using her traditional knowledge of the land that she gained through first-hand experience.
Another Padma recipient from the southern state of Karnataka is Matha B Manjamma Jogati, a transgender woman, granted the Padma Shri award for her contribution to arts. She was fifteen years old when her family shunned her for being transgender. Abandoned and humiliated, she took to begging on the streets for survival. She was sexually assaulted multiple times and, one day, attempted suicide by drinking poison. Manjamma Jogati learnt to perform folk dance, Jogathi Nrithya, for survival. She mastered the art form of Jogathi Nrithya through Kallava Jogathi and began performing across the state.
Manjamma also went on to become the first transgender president of Karnataka Jaanapada Academy, a government body for performing arts in Karnataka.
Felicitated as Beejmata — seed mother, Rahibai Soma Popere, a farmer and seed banker has conserved and preserved more than 150 varieties of indigenous seeds of grains and vegetables. Popere hails from the remote Kombhalne village in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. The Kombhalne village, of about 1,000-odd houses, is situated on a hillock reached by either on foot or through a kutcha road. Power for 24x7 and mobile range is a far-fetched dream for the villagers. In fact, when IANS caught up with her a day after the award function, she had not even spoken with her family members back home. "What to do? There is no phone connectivity either?" Her method to store these seeds was and still is a simple, homegrown, traditional method. The seeds are kept with ash in an earthen pot that is sealed with a paste of cow dung and soil. Sometimes, ash is replaced by a mixture of dried neem leaves and rock salt. "Seeds kept like this can stay undamaged for 10 years," she said.
Inspired by her work, 3,500 women from her and surrounding villages came together to form an umbrella organisation, 'Kalsubai Samvardhan Samiti'.
Moving from the south-west to the north, Social worker Tsultrim Chonjor of Stongde village in Ladakh has been named for the Padma Shri award for his social work. He has dedicated his life and property to social causes. From May 2014 to June 2017, he single-handedly led efforts to construct a 38-km stretch of road from Ramjak, an inhabited area on the Jammu and Kashmir side of Shinkula pass, to Kargyak village, the first properly inhabited village in the Zanskar region. Spending Rs 57 lakh from his own pocket after dipping into his life savings and selling his ancestral property, he pressed a JCB machine into action, set forth with five donkeys and constructed the road.
His work was recognised by the BRO, which then took the work of constructing a road from Darcha to Padum, headquarters of Zanskar valley in the Ladakh region.
While assessing the backgrounds of the awardees, one can notice the sheer exuberance and effort invested by grassroot activists and activist organisations in creating social change and positively impacting civil societies in their legal battle on creating a social equilibrium. What has been lost in big shot agendas and vote bank politics is being seemingly resurrected in and through the work of such individuals: a social voice, working for the people, for the environment to conserve the diverse fabric of the country.
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