The system of state awards, honours and privileges has always seemed odd in modern India. That lack of fit is growing. An award like the Bharat Ratna may have been instituted as part of the nation-building project — a “recognition of public service of the highest order” — but it soon lost its idealism and lustre and became an adjunct of a claustrophobic system of state patronage more at home in the colonial era. In coalition times, with power-sharing arrangements becoming the norm at the Centre, the competition for awards has become more contentious, but not more open or transparent. Today, India’s excellence is being realised and fulfilled in areas that increasingly lie outside arenas of the state. New India is announcing its presence and ambition in private enterprise, in the arts, on the cricket field, in the film industry, and in so many other spaces that do not depend on either the support of or validation by the state.

The petitioning and lobbying for the Bharat Ratna is a sad spectacle indeed. It undermines both the dignity of the eminent personalities in the fray and the spirit of a nation that is reimagining itself in unprecedented ways.