The case against awards, Why the wrong person always wins

On reading this article, I could not help but be reminded of the video shown in class where the most versatile and respected Indian actor, Naseeruddin Shah, describes the whole concept of presenting awards to be an abysmal show that only tries to please rather than appreciate. The author seems to convey the same.

From all the Bollywood award ceremonies that I've seen, it always happens that when a judging committee presents the award to a particular actor, all the other awarding panels follow suit. The judging criteria is now "Who is popular" rather than "Who is the best". A similar situation occurred when A.R.Rahman won the Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire. While the movie was a massive hit (God knows why?!), a sizable majority felt the background score wasn't good enough to bag the Oscar. This said, one important thing to note is that popular is what sells and the best is not always popular. Hence to keep the masses happy and entertained, it becomes imperative to award the popular individual. People are enamored by the outer shell and fail to see the substance within.

From the authors point of view, I find that he seems to have developed a bias right from when he was young. He seems to stress on all the awarding decisions that went wrong and fails to bring to light the ones that went right. It's not "always" that the wrong person wins. There have been several situations where the award has been presented to the most deserving candidate.

For Putin, a Peace Prize for a Decision to Go to War

Right from the title of the article, the author clearly brings out the sarcasm and depicts how much he values the award itself. The fact that the award stands to commemorate peace but is given to a person for having gone to war seems to convey enough regarding its worth and intent. Started by Qiao Damo and others as a competition to the Nobel Peace Prize, it has brought out nothing more than the shameful side of China. While the first winner failed to even turn up to receive the award, it wouldn’t be surprising if Putin did the same. An unheard of award with its intentions clearly gone wrong is all that Putin needs right now.