And the nominees are…

It is that time of the year again. Newspapers are abuzz with stories of nominations for one of the most coveted prizes on earth – The Nobel. Over the years, the Nobel peace prize announcement is an eagerly awaited event. The peace prize has been the most controversial among the Nobel awards. The illustrious list of laureates consists of people like Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Red Cross, European Union etc. The controversial awardees include Yasser Arafat, Rabin and Perez whose past records were forgotten when they were awarded the peace prize and Obama, who was awarded more in anticipation of peace than for a track record for promoting peace. The biggest pacifist who has walked the earth, Mahatma Gandhi, was inexplicably never awarded the prize, despite being nominated five times. The loss is entirely that of the Nobel institution and not of the Mahatma.

This year, over 250 organizations and individuals have been nominated for the peace prize. The nominees include Malala Yousafzai, the brave blogger who dared to take on the Taliban and was shot at, and VladimirPutin, the elected dictator of Russia for his efforts in preventing a full blown war on Syria by the US and its allies. My choice of nominees would be: Pulse Polio Immunization Campaign of India and Wikipedia.

Pulse Polio Immunization (PPI) Campaign

India had one of the largest rates of Poliomyletis, a disease that causes permanent disability. The disease has no cure, but can be prevented easily by oral vaccination. The PPI Campaign was initiated in 1995 with the aim of total eradication of Polio from India. The key stakeholders include the Central and State Governments, UNICEF, International aid agencies (USAID, JICA, DANIDA, DfID), Rotary International and a host of voluntary agencies, NGOs etc. The goal was to immunize every infant below 5 years of age twice a year. The challenges included geographical spread, cost, poor infrastructure, lack of skilled manpower, lack of safe storage for vaccines, religious beliefs etc. In 2012, on a single day, 175 million infants were administered the vaccine in over 650,000 booths setup across the length and breadth of the country. While the managers of this mammoth exercise deserve all praise for the planning and executing this gigantic project, the role played by the grassroots workers cannot be underestimated. The message of the campaign was well spread through advertisements featuring Amitabh Bachchan. Local leaders and celebrities have pitched in to popularize the campaign as well. In a country where there is a large floating population, a centralized campaign will be of limited utility. To reach out to every nook and corner, immunization was done at railway stations, inside moving trains, religious places, homes etc. The number of polio cases has drastically reduced from 32,000 in 1995 to 1 in 2012. If the momentum is sustained, the dreaded disease will be a thing of the past very soon. This endeavor is the result of co-operation across nations and contributes towards the noble cause of freedom from a debilitating disease. Truly, worth a Nobel peace prize.

Wikipedia

Knowledge is power. Barriers to gaining knowledge pose serious challenges to the upward mobility of large portions of mankind. Wikipedia was founded in 2001, by Jimmy Wales, with the aim of creating a free-content encyclopedia accessible to everyone with an internet access. The achievements are mind boggling. The site attracts 470 milion unique visitors every month, has 77,000 volunteer contributors and 22 million articles in 285 languages. Wikipedia serves as a good starting point for research into any topic on the sun – be it history, arts, economics, politics or technology. The greatness of this institution is that “it is a temple of the mind”, not a place where knowledge is available for sale. As this Wikipedia page states, “Commerce is not evil, but it just does not belong here”. In an era where anything and everything is up for sale and “monetizing” is the buzzword, this gigantic collaboration project for spreading the light of knowledge deserves nothing less than the ultimate prize – The Nobel.