Eight science and health departments have been requested by the Home Ministry to reduce the more than 300 awards they now give out and replace them with honours of “high significance” for “really deserving candidates.” Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla also proposed creating a Nobel Prize-like award for scientists in conjunction with the Principal Scientific Adviser to the government during a meeting with the secretaries of the science and health departments. The initiative is in accordance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s directives to overhaul the entire awards ecosystem in order to foster credibility and confidence by emphasising openness and objectivity during the selection process.
The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awards will continue, but the home secretary has requested the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to change the monthly honorarium regulations by capping it at 15 years. All private endowment, lecture/scholarship/fellowship, and internal prizes are to be discontinued, which the Department of Science and Technology now does with over 200 awards each year. It has been requested to launch a new scholarship/fellowship programme with a suitable honorarium, thorough justification, and comprehensive guidelines. Internal rewards should also be incorporated into the new programme.
The home secretary had requested that all ministries rationalise the rewards they had given out in May. The National Medical Council’s three prizes, including the B C Roy Award, have been recast, and a new award of “extremely high importance” has been instituted. The Department of Health has been urged to “rationalise” the number of Florence Nightingale Nurses Awards granted to 51 nurses annually. The 37 awards—including the 32 endowment awards—were cancelled at the request of the home secretary, who also requested that the Calcutta National Medical College (CNMC) Short Term Studentship (STS) Excellence Award be changed into a research grant.
The home secretary announced that the Prime Minister’s Office will shortly hold a review meeting in this regard. After eliminating the current awards, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Department of Space, and Department of Atomic Energy have been urged to establish new honours of “extremely high magnitude.”
