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Indian of the Year public service: Madhavan Nair
Published on Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 10:58 in India section
Tags: Indian Of The Year 2009, CNN-IBN , New Delhi
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New Delhi: The award for public service is perhaps the most prestigious among CNN-IBN's Indian of the Year awards.
The nominees list include Baba Ramdev, someone who has popularised yoga among the public, to Maulana Madani who has mounted a theological challenge to terrorism.
The nominees also include people like Vijay Mahajan who work in rural areas bringing finance to the poor and those like Janagaraha who work in urban areas urging citizens to exercise their vote.
IAS Officers, RK Singh and Pratyaya Amrit, who worked in seamless coordination to ensure rescue and rehabilitation of the victims of the Bihar floods were also nominated.
Yet this year the award for public service has gone to those who dreamt the furthest. Madhavan Nair and team ISRO took Chandrayan to the moon and told every Indian how far one can go if we try hard enough.
The night of November 14, 2008 marked a turning point in Indian space history. As the Moon Impact Probe broke free from mother spacecraft Chandrayaan and landed on the moon, India was catapulted into becoming only the fifth nation that has sent missions to the moon.
And making this dream a reality was ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair and his team of scientists who worked relentlessly over the past four years to make India's moon mission possible.
The hard work put in by Madhavan Nair and his team did not go unnoticed by the CNN-IBN jury. Jury Member and Hindustan Times Vice-Chairperson and Editorial Director Shobhana Bhartia said, “He has done us proud, it was one category where there was complete unanimity as to who should be the winner.”
But for now, just the thought of the Tricolour on the moon, is enough for a nation of one billion to know that the sky is really not the limit.
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Indians will never come out from the corrupt mentality for another 100 years, as I am disappointed to see Madhavan
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Though Chandrayan is a great milestone, I do not think this should be recognised as a public service. The reason
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