Tribute and Support for Dr Kishan from Manjunath Shanmugam Trust
PR , 15th June 2009

Third Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Awards ceremony held on 13th June 2009 at IIM Bangalore. The Awards were presented by Aruna Roy, social activist and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, jointly to Vinod Adhau (Village Revenue Officer, Anjangao Surji taluk of Amaravati District, Mahashtra), Jitendra Chaturvedi (founder and chief, DEHAT, a voluntary organisation working in the backward districts of Bahraich district, Indo-Nepal Border) and Sanjiv Chaturvedi (Deputy Forest Conservator, Panchkula, Haryana) in the city on Saturday.

The other nominees for the award were late Manoj Gupta (Executive Engineer, Uttar Pradesh PWD, Auraiyya District, Uttar Pradesh), Pankaj Khanna (Ex-Officer of HPCL), Ashok Khemka (IAS officer, Haryana), T.R. Krishnappa (social activist and farmer, Ripponpet, Karnataka) and late Thignam Kishan Singh (Sub Divisional Officer, Manipur Civil Service).

Manjunath Shanmugam Trust gave tribute and support to two posthumous nominees Late Dr Thignam Kishan Singh and Late Manoj Gupta.

Please note that the Third Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity Award did NOT go to Dr Kishan Thinnam, but the jury and the trust felt that the gravity of the case is so strong that they want to pay tribute to him and support him for his case.

The jury comprised S. Gopalakrishnan (CEO & Managing Director, Infosys Technologies), Rama Bijapurkar (Strategy Consultant & independent consultant on the board of many prominent companies), Shekhar Gupta (Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express).

A citation given to Late Tamo Kishan by the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust is enclosed here with. A video recording and photographs of the event and a newspaper clip from the Hindu and photocopy of the citation will be made available to your offices today.

Please follow the link from The Hindu of yesterday (14 June 2009).

Message from the Jury

Words like Jury and judging are really not appropriate for the task we set out to do - all the valid entries that were in the shortlist given to us were simply amazing. The common thread through all of them was the courage to take on a system despite a huge personal cost and no personal gain - in fact personal pain. the motivation in all cases was the same.

It was an obligation that the person felt , to fight against people and systems and establishments that were doing harm to fellow men and weakening the fabric of our society, and encouraging more of the same behaviour from more people, because they seem to prosper with no visible consequences.

These MS awards have been instituted with the idea that there are people who, if their work was better known, and the results they achieved better highlighted, could serve as powerful role models and energize a whole lot more of us to do our bit as well, to fight corruption in public spheres. All our finalists qualify on that count. It only is a matter of degree . Therefore we did not judge and say this is great this is not so great. We SELECTED the ones we wanted to highlight this time, which we felt was likely to resonate with a larger number of people and inspire them to act too - that is the mission and purpose of this trust.

The criteria for our selection on which ones to highlight were based on

• Gravity of the situation - impact on society
• Corrective action undertaken, not only reporting of the situation
• The extent of difficulty faced by the nominee in correcting the situation
• Future Course of action planned
• Need/use of cash award.

Again, we want to emphasize that criteria like "degree of difficulty faced", does not mean that we by any stretch of imagination believe that any of the finalists had an easy task and faced less resistance. It was, as we said earlier, only a matter of degree - and that too, as perceived by three people who were not on the spot and truly could not even imagine what it could have been like , in THAT spot.

So it is with all humility that we say we selected the three that we have for highlighting this time, and congratulate all the finalists. We are honestly not up to this onerous task, and we would like to say a heartfelt "thank you" to all those who submitted entries for these awards. Thank you for making us all pause and reflect on what the really important duties that we as citizens and members of society have, and thank you for giving us this wonderful opportunity to see such amazing human spirit in action.

JURY

The distinguished jurors, drawn from the corporate sector as well as public life, comprise :

• S. Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD,Infosys Technologies. Mr. Gopalakrishnan is also on the Advisory Board of the Trust.
• Rama Bijapurkar, Strategy Consultant, and Independent Director on the boards of Infosys Technologies, CRISIL, UTI Bank, Godrej Consumer Products, Entertainment Network (India) Ltd. and Give Foundation.
• Shekhar Gupta, CEO, Indian Express Group, Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, host of "Walk the Talk" on NDTV 24x7, author of the weekly column "National Interest".

Read all about Dr. Kishan's killings here.

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This PR was webcasted on June 15, 2009 .

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