Year Ender 2023 | Khel Ratna, Padma Shri, Arjuna Award: Deeper meaning of awards & rewards in the world of sports

Badminton duo Chirag Shetty (left) and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy will be bestowed with the Khel Ratna Award 2023. (Photo via X)

The year 2023 is ending as well as it started for Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy, the badminton doubles combination that will get the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award for 2023. They will be presented with this in January 2024.

The dynamic combination, an energetic, eminently watchable duo on court, capped the year with an Asian Games gold medal, having begun 2023 with a semi-final appearance in the Malaysia Open in January. They won titles in the Swiss Open in March, Indonesia Open in June, Korea Open in July, besides becoming only the second Indians — across categories — to win a gold medal in the Asia Championships after Dinesh Khanna’s singles title 58 years ago. Last year, they had a gold in the Commonwealth Games, a bronze medal in the World Championships and inspired the Indian men’s badminton contingent to its first-ever Thomas Cup team title.

In October this year, the pair reached the number one ranking in men’s doubles, becoming the first Indian set to get to the top. They might finish 2023 at the number two spot, the culmination of some exceptional work, over the last two years especially.

If the Khel Ratna is the highest honour an Indian sportsperson can get, it is not a reflection of the best an Indian sportsperson can achieve. Shetty-Rankireddy, for example, are yet to win the biggest titles in badminton, like the Olympics, the All England and the World Championships. Considering their accomplishments so far, and that both are still in their 20s, winning some or all of these major titles is likely to happen, if they remain consistent and injury free.

In that, the Khel Ratna seems short-sighted in some awarded cases, given to athletes as a measure of success over a limited period of time as opposed to as recognition for a career’s worth of work. For example, Sharath Kamal’s award last year would seem like recognition for his long, decorated career in table tennis, while Neeraj Chopra won it for his gold medal in the javelin in the Tokyo Olympics. Dipa Karmarkar won it for finishing fourth in 2016 Rio de Janeiro, the first Indian gymnast to make it to the Olympics, while Mithali Raj won it a year before she retired from a cricketing career that was over two decades long.

The Arjuna Award falls in the more entry-level category of awards given by the sports ministry, like this year’s prizes for Mohammed Shami (for the recently-concluded cricket World Cup) and R Vaishali, India’s third woman chess grandmaster.

BCCI recommended Mohammed Shami for Arjuna Award after his performance at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023. (Photo via X)

It would be prudent to assume that awards have a meaning beyond recognition of a person’s achievements in a certain field, be it sport or any other. Sportspeople are often considered role models, with their passion, discipline and single-minded dedication to excelling in their field of choice. In that, the nation’s highest sporting award, the Khel Ratna, should be a recognition of an unmatched sporting achievement, a lifetime of work as well as conduct off field.

Badminton has produced a bunch of Khel Ratna winners, including P Gopi Chand in 2000, Saina Nehwal in 2010 and PV Sindhu in 2016. The year Sindhu won it, besides Karmarkar and shooter Jitu Rai, the other awardee was wrestler Sakshi Malik.

Sakshi Malik got teary eyed and quit wrestling as Sanjay Singh was announced the new WFI chief.

Malik announced her decision to quit the sport after the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) election results this week brought in Sanjay Singh as the new chief. Singh is a close aide of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the former WFI chief, who was accused by a bunch of wrestlers, including Malik, of sexual misconduct and abuse of power.

“We slept for 40 days on the roads and a lot of people from several parts of the country came to support us,” the 31-year-old Malik said in a news conference in New Delhi, referring to the protests against Brij Bhushan Singh earlier this year during which the police forcibly removed the camped wrestlers from the venue on at least one occasion. “If Brij Bhushan Singh’s business partner and a close aide is elected as the president of WFI, I quit wrestling,” a tearful Malik said a few days ago. She added that their plea for a woman president was ignored during the election process.

One of Malik’s fellow protestors, Bajrang Punia, “returned” his Padma Shri, the country’s fourth highest civilian honour, as a mark of his objection to this WFI election. Punia had also won the Khel Ratna in 2019, after threatening to go to court for it when he was ignored for the award the previous year. “My job is to train hard and compete hard. My focus has always been on my performance and not awards. But the recognition does come your way when you do well,” PTI reported him as saying at the time. “I had the achievements to deserve this award. I have always said that awards should go to the most deserving ones.”

Besides Punia and Malik, the other prominent face of the wrestlers’ protest was Vinesh Phogat, also a winner of the Khel Ratna in 2020. These three well recognised sportspeople, along with others, could not get their most basic of demands met, which was to get a case registered against Brij Bhushan Singh and eliminate his influence from the WFI. Their combined resistance, which had come at the risk of loss of career and reputation, deserved intervention, an investigation and a decision establishing Brij Bhushan Singh’s innocence or guilt.

“The ‘daughters’ who wanted to be the brand ambassadors of ‘beti bachao, beti padhao’ have reached such a state that they had to leave the sport,” Punia wrote in a statement in Hindi, addressed to the Prime Minister. “Awarded wrestlers like us could do nothing. After the women wrestlers were insulted, I would not be able to live as an ‘awardee’. Hence, I am returning this award to you.”

“Whenever we went to an event, we would be introduced on stage as Padma Shri, Khel Ratna and Arjuna awardee, which would encourage the crowd to applaud. If someone refers to me as such, I would feel disgusted because despite all these awards, the life of respect that every woman wrestler wants, they have been denied that,” Punia’s statement, posted on the social media platform X, added.

File photo of Bajrang Punia and Vinesh Phogat at Jantar Mantar during the wrestlers' protest. In solidarity with Sakshi Malik, Punia has returned his Padma Shri award. (Photo via X)

Punia might have a bit of a complex relationship with awards, but the reason sportspeople seek it is for the added benefits, of remuneration, access, and recognition, that it provides. Returning it is a symbolic gesture, which also devalues the award.

Self-help guru Dale Carnegie once said that people work for money but go the extra mile for recognition, praise and rewards. But sportspeople, in India in particular, would benefit more from retired American gymnast Mary Lou Retton’s words, when she said, “A trophy collects dust. Memories last forever.”