She
won Big Brother and then had a perfume launched
in the UK in her name, which we hear is a big success
and she got an honorary doctorate from the Leed’s
University and now Dr. Shilpa Shetty will be awarded
the Rajiv Gandhi National Quality award. The list
of the previous recipients of this prestigious award
reads thus; Mukesh Ambani, Kumaramangalam Birla,
Shah Rukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Lakshmi Nivas
Mittal and many more eminent and highly proficient
personalities who can lay claim to being the best
in the world at what they do and now Dr. Shipla
Shetty is going to be added to this list for some
great and peerless achievement that no one but the
gossip starved electronic media and page 3 seem
to care about.
Of course, this is no fault of Shilpa Shetty. She
never asked for it and she can do nothing more than
gratefully accept the honor bestowed upon her. But
the fault lies with whoever decided that this one
must go to her. The criteria that was employed to
choose Shilpa Shetty as this year’s recipient
is very puzzling, if there was any. If the idea
was to honor a film personality who has done great
things, then there are names that are rarely cared
for by the media that could have been thought of.
Now, this is no nomination, but a Deepa Mehta or
a Meera Nair would have been far more apt. The idea
is that the award must go to someone who has performed
at a level that the international community recognizes,
consistently for a long period of time for people
of the world to sit up and take notice of the person
and the place that he/she comes from. Else, the
person must have made immense contributions to a
particular field, which has genuinely benefited
large number of people. Now Shilpa doesn’t
fit into any of these categories.
Yes, she did have a few weeks of international fame
when she was constantly on TV in Big Brother, but
people noticed her only after she was involved in
that distasteful incident with a certain English
lady. Maybe that too was by apparent fault of her’s.
But the fact remains that Shilpa’s claim to
international fame is very shallow and weak and
one wonders when there are so many worthy candidates
waiting for inspiration and recognition this award
should not have gone to Shilpa.
Again, the stress here is that Shilpa is not to
blame for all the unnecessary attention and accolades
that she is getting, she would be happier with a
Filmfare. The idea is that, people who have the
privilege sit round tables and decide who from our
vast great country should be honored seem to be
too dazzled or cornered by the world of entertainment
and the attention grabbing capacity of page 3 that
they lose perspective.
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