Sansad Ratna 2013 Award Function: Facilitating Top Parliamentarians of India!!
Today, I went to the Sansad Ratna 2013 Award Function & National Seminar at IC & SR Auditorium, IIT Madras campus. This award function was mainly to facilitate the top parliamentarians of India based on their attendance, no. of questions raised, bills passed, contributions to their constituency, etc. This event was conducted jointly by the Humanities department of IIT Madras & Prime Point Foundation.
The day started with a presentation and interactive session on how our parliament works. The statistics presented in this session were very informative and I will write a separate post on this topic. There are a lot of things that we don’t know about our parliament! This session was conducted by Mr. Chakshu Roy (PRS Legislative Research).
After this, there was a short talk by Mr. T S Krishnamurthy, Former Chief Election Commissioner of India. Among other points, he insisted on the importance of transparent funding process of political parties. He felt that Government could sponsor the campaign expenses of candidates, if need be.
This was followed by a short speech by Professor K Ramamurthy, Director In-Charge, IIT Madras & Dean – Academic Courses. Among others, he spoke about how the IIT Madras has grown over the last 54 years keeping the bio-diversity of the campus neatly intact. It seems their academic institution has filed for 42 patents last year alone and was involved in NPTEL (Open/Free course-ware/information portal, open for all students).
After this, the Governor of Tamil Nadu, Shri. Rosiah arrived and gave the awards to the Top Lok Sabha MP’s (I guess for last year). Here they are:
- Shri AnandRao Adsul (Shiv Sena, Maharashtra)
- Shri SS Ramasubbu (Congress, Tamil Nadu)
- Shri Arjun Ram Meghwal (BJP, Rajasthan)
- Shri Hansraj Gangaram Ahir (BJP, Maharashtra)
- Smt. Rama Devi (BJP, Bihar)
- Smt. Jhansi Botcha Lakshmi (Congress, Andhra Pradesh)
This was followed by Q&A session with these MP’s. Among other topics, the discussion focused on why our parliament works only for a few days, why there are so many disruptions in our parliament, how disruptions become a tool for making the Government to notice & act, how their work in the parliament benefited their respective constituencies, what challenges were faced by women MP’s in India, why they were selected as the best MP, etc.
The best session, however, was reserved for the last – The panel discussion with people from various walks of life (including MLAs and MPs) from Tamil Nadu. I guess this was more interesting because the session was in Tamil and there was no translation involved. The public got into full form and bombarded the politicos (which included Mr. Thirumavalavan, Viduthalai Chiruthai Katchi; Mr. H. Raja, BJP; Ms. Vijayadharani, Congress) with all sort of questions and they answered them convincingly with equal enthusiasm!!
Some topics discussed in this session included participation of youth in politics, involvement of people in the governance process, paid news in publications, hero worship culture, right to recall, paid votes, non-voting, funding of elections, inner party democracy, party reform, proportionate representative system, decriminalization of politics, etc. As you can guess, the session was STEAMY!! This session was chaired by Ms. Banu Gomes from our Chennai Bloggers Club.
I think the organizers must be credited for identifying/recognizing the best-performing ministers, educating the people on governance-related issues and inspiring them to participate further to make the largest democracy better/more functional.
The message is clear to all MP’s: You are now being watched and your performance is being monitored!! Howz that for a change, huh? 🙂
Destination Infinity
PS: For more details, interviews and videos, please visit the Sansad Ratna site.
I would like to attend one of those. It would have been interesting to listen to their discussion.Is there any place where the transcript of such events are available?(possibly in english) 😛
I think they should have recorded a video of it, if it becomes available in Youtube, I’ll translate the discussion (partly) in to English in my blog. Even otherwise, in the near future I will be expanding on certain topics discussed, here in my blog.
Destination Infinity
Great then, I will wait for them.I will also try searching them. 🙂
This is interesting! It is interesting to know that they could recognise some politicians to falicitate…nobody has got a good opinion about them!
Will they be good boys, at least a bit, in the future?!
Let us hope that they will be good boys and girls in the future 🙂
Destination Infinity
Yes, it is interesting. Great that they could come up identifying the best contributed politician, driving apart the general bad reputation. Looking forward to know more about the session.
If I get a link of individual session videos from Youtube, I will link to it from this post in the future.
Destination Infinity
Looks like an interesting seminar. Would like to read more on this seminar. Pardon my ignorance. I try to keep myself abreast of what is happening in India. But I have never heard of these 6 MPs. You wrote: “This was followed by Q&A session for these ministers”. These 6 MPs are ministers also?
I guess it is my mistake. I generally assume that all MP’s are by default ministers! Now I recognize the error. I will change it.
Destination Infinity
Sorry Rajesh. When I read your post, I should have noticed that there a few BJP MPs in that list. Had I noticed, I would not have asked “are these MPs ministers also?”.
thanks for your good write up. The programme was organised by Prime Point Foundation, jointly with IIT Madras. You have mentioned wrongly as PRS Legislative Reseach. We had invited them to make a presentation in the first session. I will be thankful if you could kindly make the necessary corrections.
We have video recorded the whole event. We will update http://www.sansadratna.in with the more details, photos, videos in the course of the week. Please keep following the site.
The special edition of ezine PreSense launched by The Governor also will be released on Monday with Dr Kalam’s exclusive message.
thanks again for your interest.
K. Srinivasan, Chairman, Prime Point Foundation 91766 50273
I have made the required corrections now. Thanks for the link to Sandad Ratna site, I have mentioned it in the blog post and I will follow that page during the next week.
Destination Infinity
I look forward to watching the video, D.I.
I’ll try to put it up here…
Destination Infinity
Why is IIT conducting these parliament things when schools teach, DI?
I remember we had parliament working awareness in our school. The intention was to impart understanding of the way our parliament works.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made a blunder with allowing states to decide for itself whether FDI in their state be allowed or not. He should be impeached by the President.
I don’t know why IIT is conducting these parliamentary meets. Maybe they have some concern for the people and the way politics is run in our country??
Destination Infinity
Wow Rajesh! You seem to be going to all interesting events ! Really appreciate your interest in diverse issues. Thanks for sharing! I have always dislike Civics i nclassrooms. Such a beautiful subject but taught in such a boring way. Hopefully this takes a turn for the better. Somewhere I believe it would affect the way youth view politics as well 🙂
I too remember civics being a boring subject in classrooms. Fortunately, it carried only 10 marks out of 100 in SSc and hence we could even omit the whole book!! Time to make these subjects more interesting.
Destination Infinity
Very interesting. I am really amazed at the vast expanse of your topics… well done.
Long time since you posted something in your Blog, Jas? Thanks, anyway.
Destination Infinity
Interesting but my lack of interest in politics did not make me click their link.
The info has not been updated there yet anyway… Lack of interest in politics? Maybe it is temporary. Every Indian is interested in knowing more about politics 🙂
Destination Infinity
thanks for sharing the news and event.
My pleasure, SM 🙂
Destination Infinity
Interesting, I’d love to attend one of these.
Is it a ‘all are welcome’ kind of event or did u get an invitation??
The invitees had to register beforehand, but any member of the public could do so.
Destination Infinity