Everyone's been talking about SANT SINGH CHATWAL on whether he deserved the PADMA AWARD at all....SANT OR SHAITAN i dont want to debate over it.....what i'm upset about is that where lies the credibility in these awards anymore....Those who felt proud over being bestowed with this high honor ....don't feel the same anymore.........
Anupam Kher tweets about it saying.."For a long time when i used to pass d wall,where my framed PADMASHRI hangs,i had this peculiar sense of achievement.Ignore looking at it now"....on one side i was proud that these awards were given to well deserved sportsmen other than the usual cricketers eg.Mr.Bindra and the young Saina Nehwal...on the other hand i witness a mockery of the entire system.........
I suppose there are two questions that come to mind. One is, is Chatwal merely a bad businessman, or an actual “crook”?...... He’s settled his debts to the IRS ($4 million), forfeited a building he owned that had a lien on it, and the $12 million loan he didn’t pay to the Bank of New York was eventually resolved in court (Chatwal had to pay $125,000)...... The Indian banks that had accused him of bank fraud eventually dropped the case against him. Chatwal’s lawyer puts it like this:
“The man came to this country, accumulated an empire, lost it during the time of real estate [softness], and has struggled and worked to try to pay off his debts,” said A. Mitchell Greene, Chatwal’s lawyer for 25 years...... “It has been a long battle, but he has cleared up all of his obligations, and in the process he is trying to accumulate his wealth again.”
To my mind, he’s somewhere in between “failed investor” and “crook” (where “crook” admittedly isn’t so much meant as a legal term as it is a kind of moral judgment), partly because at the peak of his troubles he and his family continued to live pretty extravagantly — as if nothing were amiss....
If only one would have witnessed his son(VICKRAM CHATWAL)'S wedding would they know what does INDULGENCE ,LUXURY AND EXTRAVAGANCE really mean.......Also how can one forget his support (both monetary and physically) for the hiliary CLINTON campaign ...and him rubbing shoulders with people i can only read about in the papers or watch on television......
Lets stop the SANT-BASHING and look at it in a different perspective......He(Mr.Chatwal) has indeed provided employment to way too many can i can count...Also he does know the Elite round the globe(CLINTON ,OBAMA,TONY BLAIR ETC)........yet with all this i somehow cant convince myself into believing that what has happened is good....I some-how find our farmers who brave the cold to fill our stomachs' or those NSG's who had to fight, because our Intelligence failed far more deserving........
On this Re-public Day all i wish for is that we be proud of our country for a reason....and not cause our we just love saying it.....and really acknowledge a TRUE HERO...if ever we come across one........
HAPPY REPUBLIC DAY......
I think Rajdeep Sardesai had a good point to make. According to him, the Government is bestowing this honor on Chatwal only because he promoted India abroad, so the government is basically saying 'You promote us and we recognize you'.
I personally feel a simple 'Thank you, Mr.Chatwal' would have been more than enough in that case.
ya....i saw that discussion..... So true....... A Coffee Hamper would do the job compared to the padma.........