Awards, recognition and money
IT is a custom that achievers in the community and society are recognized. One of the greatest recognitions is Nobel Prize.
The Government of India announces annual recognitions with Padma Sree, Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhusan and Bharath Ratna. Then there are Presidential Awards, University Awards, Scientific Awards, Medical Awards, etc.
It is important that we recognize great achievers, inventors, social workers and selfless community people. All communities, people, societies, organizations and countries recognize achievers and contributors to the society. It is important that we do that.
The recent trend in the Indian and Malayalee communities to recognize people in the community has changed. Instead of creating a criterion for recognition and following a proper selection process, awardees are selected based on how much money they made in their personal lives and how much they can contribute to the organization.
This is a bad trend and it is not considered recognition of achievement but rather recognition of how much money the awardee can donate. This trend has become more frequent among our community outside India.
Many Malayalees have become very successful businesspeople outside India and the only way they can display their success for them is to donate to events that recognize them. Actually, the bidding war has increased to 10 and 20 fold in the amount of sponsorship. This is a very small group of people who have been successful in the community.
The majority of Malayalees who migrated to other countries during the last 50 years are having a normal life - working hard, building their career and having a good family and community life.
The community awards and recognition should not connect with money, but rather real achievements. Instead of calling a person who has donated a lot of money a lifetime achiever, let us recognize somebody who has made real contributions in various fields, like science, technology, medicine, economics, literature, community work, social work etc.
It is important that we recognize and give awards to members of our community who have made achievements in various fields and contributed their service to the community. But this should not be based on how much money one individual has donated or contributed. The awards and recognition should have a true value, not a monetary value.
Malayalee community has spread all over the world and we have thousands of Malayalee social, community and religious organizations all over the world and outside Kerala in India. We must use these organizations to uphold our traditions, culture and identity and allow the next generations growing up in different cultures and communities to appreciate our traditions and culture.
Our culture is not based on recognizing achievements based on how much money is donated by an individual, but on how much a person has contributed to the community and society at large.
I attended a memorial for an old friend of mine who died in Kerala. He has three children and all are married to non-Malayalees. He has six grandchildren. The children, their spouses and grandchildren spoke. Everybody spoke about the Malayalee culture he tried to uphold and his love for the community until he died.
That was a true recognition of his life both for his family and the community he belonged to.
We always fail to recognize people in our community because they may not come forward and do not know about their service and achievements. We only hear about the people who donate large amounts mainly for the purpose of getting recognition.
Let us recognize and give awards to those who have truly contributed to the community and to the world on various levels. World Malayalee Voice wants to project those achievers in two categories, Millennium Malayalee (the new generations)) and Planet Malayalee (the current generation).
Please send information, contacts and photographs of those achievers to World Malayalee Voice. Our email IDs are: [email protected] or [email protected]
