Government disgraces Olympic heroes

The omission of boxer Vijender Singh and wrestler Sushil Kumar from the list of Padma Awardees has left the entire country shocked. This has once again exposed the ignorance to achievements that exists in the mind of the people government especially our bureaucracy. How on earth can anyone explain the omission of the Beijing heroes who could not make it to the list of 133 recipients of the prestigious Padma Awards.

Olympic Bronze Medallist Vijender and Sushil are rightly upset more with the Government on this. Even more because Olympic Gold Medalist Abhinav Bindra was chosen for the Padma Shri awards. Nothing to take away from Bindra but his Gold medal was equally celebrated by the nations as were the two bronze medals that the other two won during the games. True a Gold Medal is more precious than a Bronze but was this the criteria to choose between our heroes?


It may be mentioned that Abhinav Bindra comes from an affluent family and his father is known to have great contacts in the corridors of power. Otherwise it would not have been surprising to see Abhinav Bindra's name omitted from the list as well. Just about six months back these people were being hailed as heroes of the country. The irony is after all these the government will expect our sportsman to win medals for us in Olympics.


The most surprising entry into the list was cricketer Harbhajan Singh who was also awarded the Padma Shri. But he was in the news for all the wrong reasons last year starting with the 'monkey-gate' where most of us know he had truly abused Symonds with 'Teri ?? ??” (unofficially one of the official slangs in India). Then he slapped another dancing jack of Indian cricket. Bhajji has contributed a lot to Indian cricket but he did not deserve the award this year at least not ahead of Vijender and Sushil.