Making a case for top civilian honours for entrepreneurs

THE supremo of the Nationalist Congress Party, Sharad Pawar, is often bluntly honest, even if it means ruffling some feathers. Recently, at a function, he was sitting alongside Cyrus Poonawala, the founder of the Serum Institute of India (SII), who is a personal friend of his. Pawar pointed out that he had been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second highest award, while Poonawala had only got a Padma Shri, the lowest. Wasn’t Poonawala deserving of a higher National Award, asked Pawar. Good question.

Cyrus’ father was a horse breeder, a business that the son inherited. Vaccines are integral to horse breeding, so he set up the SII. Sensing an opportunity, in a remarkably short time, he made it the largest vaccine producer in the world. Forbes magazine has listed him as the fifth richest Indian, with a net worth of $19 billion (about Rs1,43,000 crore). With the emergence of the pandemic, the SII tied up with Astra Zeneca for the manufacture of Covishield vaccine. It was a masterstroke. Till date, 870 million doses of the vaccine have been administered, most of them in India. Millions more are in the pipeline. It has been a life-saver, and both Cyrus and his son, Adar, who is the CEO of SII, have been widely acclaimed. But somehow, not in India. Doesn’t Cyrus Poonawala merit the highest honour of the country, the Bharat Ratna? I certainly think so. Apart from bringing immense wealth to the nation, he has brought stature and respect in a field — healthcare — that India is not particularly renowned for.

I was in Dubai recently and happened to meet an unusual, and hugely successful, entrepreneur, Pallikkara Abdulla Ibrahim Haji. A Keralite from Kasargod, he has got a diploma in automobile engineering. In 1966, he moved to Dubai to further his prospects and went into textiles. After making sufficient money, he decided that he wanted to give back to society, and set up an engineering college in Mangalore. By then, education had become his main passion. Realising that more Indians were coming to the Gulf for work, and that they wanted their children to go to English-medium schools with CBSE affiliation, in 2002 he set up the Gulf Asian English School in Sharjah (it currently has 6,000 students). Since then, he and his sons have established six more schools in the UAE, all with state-of-the-art infrastructure like smart classes. They all come under the PACE name. Yet, despite his far-sighted vision and enterprise, the Indian government has not thought it fit to even give a Padma Shri to Abdulla Haji.

If Abdulla Haji is big in the educational field, Sunny Varkey, also a Keralite (he is a Syrian Christian), is only bigger. His parents first founded Our Own English High School in Dubai in 1968. After a stint as a banker and opening a trading company, Varkey joined his parents in helping run their school. From that modest start, he saw immense opportunities ahead. As local schools were only for native Arabs, there was a great need for the growing number of expatriates in the Gulf to have schools where they could send their children. So, he opened Indian, Pakistani and British schools, offering education under different curricula. In 2002, he established the Global Educational Management Systems (GEMS) company, and went global. GEMS now has schools in Britain, the USA, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Singapore, Switzerland, and India, of course. Varkey is considered as the largest operator of schools, going from kindergarten to Class XII, in the world. In Dubai, it is said, only half-jokingly, that even the Sheikh has to seek an appointment with him well in advance. Yet, unbelievably, Sunny Varkey has been honoured with only a Padma Shri.

Curious, I began to look a little more closely at Padma awards. Though the Modi government has brought a common touch to the awards by honouring unsung heroes on public recommendation, the awards are dominated by politicians and bureaucrats. There are a few businessmen and entrepreneurs, but there should be more of them. In the Kerala list of awards, to my amazement, there was VK Krishna Menon, the former Union Defence Minister. He is best remembered as the man who degraded the Indian armed forces, and who was largely responsible for our humiliating debacle against the Chinese in the 1962 Himalayan conflict. He got a Padma Vibhushan.

Then, there is the strangest award of all, the Bharat Ratna, the top award, to Sachin Tendulkar. True, he is much loved and was arguably the best of his generation (admirers of West Indian Brian Lara might disagree). But cricket is played seriously by just a dozen countries. It cannot be described as an international sport. How about sports played by many more nations and more people? In badminton, for instance, Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand won the All England Championships, widely considered the premier tournament in the world. They were genuine number ones in the world in a sport that is played in a great many countries. They both got a Padma Bhushan. Olympic gold medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra also got a Padma Bhushan. The two-time World Billiards champion, Wilson Jones, only got a Padma Shri. Something is not right in how the Padma awards are given.

— The writer is a veteran journalist