The Greatest Indian

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search

The Greatest Indian was a poll sponsored by Reliance Mobile and conducted by Outlook magazine, in partnership with CNN-IBN and The History Channel. The poll was conducted from June to August 2012, with the winner, Babasaheb Dr.B.R. Ambedkar, announced on 11 August. A program associated with the poll aired from 4 June until 15 August.[1]

Unlike other editions of Greatest Britons spin-offs, The Greatest Indian did not include people from all time periods of history. Two reasons were given for this choice. The first was that "the pre-independence history of India is dominated by Mahatma Gandhi and it is impossible for anyone to come close to the Father of the Nation*(not father of nation anymore according to the Indian government and constitution) when it comes to Leadership, Impact and Contribution. [...] The panel of experts felt that if Gandhiji were to be included in the list, there would be no competition for title of The Greatest Indian".[2] Secondly, The Greatest Indian chose to focus on India as a modern nation: "India today is unrecongnizable from the India that got independence in 1947. This nation has achieved this stature in the world thanks to contribution from millions of Indians. This is an effort to recognise one who has made the maximum contribution and impact in the surge of independent India".[2]

Nominations and voting process

A list of 100 names was presented to and complied by a 28-member jury composed of actors, writers, sportspersons, entrepreneurs, and men and women of distinction in their fields.[3] This jury included N. Ram (former Editor-In-Chief of The Hindu), Vinod Mehta (Editor-in-Chief of Outlook), Soli Sorabjee (Former Attorney General of India), Sharmila Tagore (Bollywood actress and former Chairperson of the Censor Board of India), Harsha Bhogle (sports), Chetan Bhagat (author),[4] Ramachandra Guha (historian),[3] Shashi Tharoor (politician and author), Nandan Nilekani, Rajkumar Hirani, Soli Sorabjee, Shabana Azmi and Arun Jaitley.[5] They finalized a list of the top 50 nominees, which was released to the public on 4 June 2012, by CNN-IBN Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai. A three-way process was then used to assess a top ten, in which equal weight was given to the votes of the jury, an online poll, and a market survey conducted by the Nielsen Company.[3] 7,129,050 people participated in this phase of the online poll.[6] Public voting was conducted from 4 June to 25 June,[1] with the final top ten were announced on 3 July.[7] A second round of voting followed, using the same method as the first, lasting from 1 July to 1 August.[1] Individuals were able to cast votes either by visiting www.thegreatestindian.in or by calling a unique number given to each of the nominees.[7] Nearly 20,000,000 people voted in this round of the survey[8] The announcement of the winner was made on 11 August,[9] with a special finale, hosted by Amitabh Bachchan and featuring other Indian celebrities, airing on 14 and 15 August (Independence Day (India)).[10]

Top ten nominees

  1. B.R. Ambedkar chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution of India
  2. J. R. D. Tata
  3. Lata Mangeshkar
  4. Sachin Tendulkar
  5. Jawaharlal Nehru
  6. Mother Teresa
  7. Atal Bihari Vajpayee
  8. Vallabhbhai Patel
  9. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
  10. Indira Gandhi
  11. Bhagat Singh
  12. Mahendra Singh Dhoni

List of original fifty nominees

  1. [[Baba Saheb Dr.Bhim Rao
Ambedkar]]
  1. Indira Gandhi
  2. APJ Abdul Kalam
  3. Jawaharlal Nehru
  4. Jayaprakash Narayan
  5. Atal Bihari Vajpayee
  6. Vallabhbhai Patel
  7. Kanshi Ram
  8. Ram Manohar Lohia
  9. Rajagopalachari
  10. Sam Manekshaw
  11. Baba Amte
  12. Mother Teresa
  13. Ela Bhatt
  14. Vinoba Bhave
  15. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
  16. Ravi Shankar
  17. M. S. Subbulakshmi
  18. M. F. Husain
  19. Bismillah Khan
  20. R. K. Narayan
  21. R K Laxman
  22. B. K. S. Iyengar
  23. Amitabh Bachchan
  24. Raj Kapoor
  25. Kamal Hasan
  26. Satyajit Ray
  27. Lata Mangeshkar
  28. A. R. Rahman
  29. Kishore Kumar
  30. Dilip Kumar
  31. Dev Anand
  32. Mohammad Rafi
  33. Homi Bhabha
  34. Dhirubhai Ambani
  35. Verghese Kurien
  36. Ghanshyam Das Birla
  37. J. R. D. Tata
  38. N. R. Narayana Murthy
  39. Vikram Sarabhai
  40. M. S. Swaminathan
  41. Ramnath Goenka
  42. Amartya Sen
  43. E. Sreedharan
  44. Sachin Tendulkar
  45. Kapil Dev
  46. Sunil Gavaskar
  47. Dhyan Chand
  48. Viswanathan Anand
  49. Milkha Singh
  50. Bhagat Singh

Results

Ambedkar was generally approved of as the greatest Indian, with several prominent scholars writing articles congratulating him, including Ramachandra Guha[3] and S. Anand.[11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

Retrieved from "https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=The_Greatest_Indian&oldid=723136671"