The Padma awards recognise achievements in all fields of activities or disciplines where an element of public service is involved. It is given in three categories: Padma Vibhushan (for exceptional and distinguished service), Padma Bhushan (distinguished service of higher order) and Padma Shri (distinguished service). We profile five lesser-known awardees this year
The first woman in the world to scale the summit of Mount Everest twice in a season, Anshu Jamsenpa hails from Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh. The Indian mountaineer is also the fastest double summitter to do it within a period of five days. Not this alone, Jamsenpa is also the only woman to do fastest double ascents of the highest crest in the world. She is also the first Indian woman to scale Mount Everest on five occasions and the first woman as well as the first mother to complete double ascents twice.
Awarded the country’s fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri in 2021, it was on May 12, 2011 that Jamsenpa stood atop the Mount Everest for the first time.
Two years later, in 2013, she summited the Mount Everest during the 2013 North East India Everest Expedition which was led by Surjit Singh Leishangthem.
On achieving the rare honour of standing atop the 8848 m peak, the Arunachal Pradesh government recommended her name for the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award. And on September 25, 2018, President Ram Nath Kovind presented the nation’s highest adventure award for 2017 to Jamsenpa for adventure. Not only this, she has been awarded Woman Achiever of the Year 2011-12 award by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) in Guwahati in June 2012. A year before, the talented mountaineer was conferred the CNN-IBN Young Indian Leader Award. She was given with the Tourism Icon of the Year Award by the Arunachal Pradesh government in 2017 and has been conferred PhD by Arunachal University of Studies for her achievements in the field adventure sports. The mother of two daughters, Jamsenpa is married to Tsering Wange, the president of Arunachal Mountaineering and Adventure Sports Association.
On April 2, 2017, Jamsenpa started her Everest climb from Guwahati after taking the blessings the 14th Dalai Lama. It took her 38 days to acclimatise with the region’s weather at the 17,600ft Everest Base Camp and on April 4, she began her main journey. And on May 16, Jamsenpa unfurled the Indian National Flag as she stood atop the highest peak on the planet with 17 other climbers.
Three days later, on May 19, she began her second gruelling trek with Nepali climber Furi Sherpa, hiking continuously till around 10 in the night. Jamsenpa began climbing early the next morning, only taking a brief break before the final summit hike. She reached the apex finally at 7.45 am on May 21.
It was with a borrowed amount of Rs 80 that Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat began her entrepreneurial journey, ably helped by with six others. Over six decades later, Lijjat Papad, which the now 91-year-old Jaswantiben started back in 1959, has become a household name.
Jaswantiben was awarded the Padma Shri Award in the trade and industry category in 2021. Initially started in Girgaum area of Mumbai, not only did Jaswantiben created an international brand, she also opened up an avenue for thousands of women who achieved financial independence by working with Lijjat.
In an interview with a news magazine, Jaswantiben had recalled that making and selling papads back then was a desperate measure to supplement the family income. That it slowly turned into a business venture was something she had never dreamt of.
One of the world’s oldest cooperatives that supports women through employment opportunities, the company was christened Shri Mahila Gruha Udyog Lijjat Papad but renamed Lijjat Papad in 1962. ‘Lijjat’ means tasty in Gujarati. Initially, these women including Jaswantiben made papads on the terraces of their homes and sold four packets to a businessman. As the demand increased, the group began supplying it on a larger scale to other regions.
Today, Lijjat Papad employs around 42,000 women in over 60 branches and is exported to the USA, Singapore, England, the Netherlands and Thailand. With a turnover of over Rs 800 crore, this women-centric business majorly employs rural women who happen to be illiterate but are highly skilled. The organisation believes in collective ownership and the philosophy of Sarvodaya meaning universal uplift or progress for all.
So passionate was legendary artist KC Sivasankar about his art that even at 92 years of age with swollen hands and loads of pain that he kept drawing. To reduce the pain, he wrapped a cloth around the wrist to prevent swelling. For over six decades, KC illustrated the famous children’s magazine, Chandamama.
The nonagenarian artist, who passed away on September 29, 2020, was conferred the Padma Shri posthumously in 2021. He was best known for illustrating the Vikrama Vetala series.
Founded by filmmakers B Nagi Reddi and Chakrapani in 1947, Chandamama was originally published in Telugu and later it got translated in 13 Indian languages.
In 1952, Nagi Reddi hired Sivasankar in 1952 where the genius artist created the sword-wielding King Vikram carrying the Vetala corpse across his shoulder in the decade of 60s.
Born in a village in Erode, Tamil Nadu, Sivasankar moved to Chennai as a 10-year-old where his arts teacher discovered his special talent in art. The child prodigy was always told by his drawing teacher that he was better than the master.
In an interview, Sivasankar said that after he finished school, he was admitted directly into the second year of a five-year art degree course at reputed School of Arts as he was better than his peer group. In fact, the then principal DP Roy Chowdhury was surprised with the brush technique Sivasankar used. It was after completing his art course from the Government Art College that he joined Kalai Magal (Tamil) magazine where he worked for almost five years. Thereafter, he joined the Chandamama aka Ambulimama magazine and the association lasted 60 long years.
Often termed as the master magician of 20th century theatre, Peter Brook is known in India for adapting the Indian epic, the Mahabharata into a stage play in the mid-1970s. First performed in 1985, the original stage play being nine hours long and toured the world over four years. It was reduced to under six hours for a TV miniseries the same year. It was further reduced to around three hours for a DVD and theatrical release. The 96-year-old was conferred with the Padma Shri in 2021 for his work in the field of arts.
Le Mahabharata had 21 actors from 16 different countries including classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai in the role of Draupadi.
This was the first occasion when the epic was adapted, first for theatre and thereafter made into a feature film.
The New York Times in an article in 1985 noted “overwhelming critical acclaim” and that the play “did nothing less than attempt to transform Hindu myth into universalised art, accessible to any culture”. On the other side, a number of post-Colonial scholars challenged the claim to universalism and accused the play of Orientalism.
Born in London’s Turnham Green area of Chiswick on March 21, 1925, Brook was the second son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants from Latvia – Simon Brook and his wife Ida (Jansen) and was educated at Westminster School, Gresham’s School and Oxford’s Magdalen College. He was in his teens when he directed his maiden production. He followed it up with another one at the Chanticleer Theatre in 1945 with a revival of The Infernal Machine. He directed King John, his first Shakespeare play in 1945, for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Two years later, in 1947, he worked as an assistant director on William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Love’s Labour’s Lost at Stratford-upon- Avon.
It was back 1996 when he caught a man stealing burnt wood from a cremation ground that the idea of forming an NGO to cremate unclaimed bodies come to the mind of Jitender Singh Shunty. Over the last two-and-a-half decades after Shunty started the Shaheed Bhagat Singh Seva Dal (SBSSD), the NGO has cremated innumerable unclaimed bodies and immersed the ashes according to the Hindu and Sikh religions.
For his untiring and selfless work in the field of social work, Shunty was conferred with the Padma Shri in 2021. Even during the period of lockdown due to COVid-19, the former MLA from Shahdara and his team of volunteers conducted funerals of the loved ones of people who couldn’t afford the last rites due to financial constraints.
In an interview to a leading news daily a few years back, Shunty had commented that people in Delhi spend crores on marriages but choose not to spend even a penny for the unknown. The NGO also provides blood free of cost to the needy, organises blood donation camps and provides free ambulance service. SBSSD also works in the field of disaster management. Today, SBSSD has 22 volunteers and 18 hearse vans and ambulances.
Born in August 1962 in Delhi, Shunty began his political career as an independent councillor from Jhilmil ward but joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in 2008. Thereafter, he contested for the councillor elections from Jhilmil ward of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation and won. In 2013, he contested the Delhi Assembly elections from the Shahdara constituency and won with a comfortable margin.