She won Big Brother! But that’s not an Oscar. She acted in Metro, Which was a hit due to the director’s merit. Yes, Shilpa Shetty has done pretty well for herself and her career in the last and she does deserve some accolades for what she has achieved, but some people don’t seem to know when they are overdoing things.

She won Big Brother and then had a perfume launched in the UK in her name, which we hear is a big success and she got an honorary doctorate from the Leed’s University and now Dr. Shilpa Shetty will be awarded the Rajiv Gandhi National Quality award. The list of the previous recipients of this prestigious award reads thus; Mukesh Ambani, Kumaramangalam Birla, Shah Rukh Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Lakshmi Nivas Mittal and many more eminent and highly proficient personalities who can lay claim to being the best in the world at what they do and now Dr. Shipla Shetty is going to be added to this list for some great and peerless achievement that no one but the gossip starved electronic media and page 3 seem to care about.

Of course, this is no fault of Shilpa Shetty. She never asked for it and she can do nothing more than gratefully accept the honor bestowed upon her. But the fault lies with whoever decided that this one must go to her. The criteria that was employed to choose Shilpa Shetty as this year’s recipient is very puzzling, if there was any. If the idea was to honor a film personality who has done great things, then there are names that are rarely cared for by the media that could have been thought of. Now, this is no nomination, but a Deepa Mehta or a Meera Nair would have been far more apt. The idea is that the award must go to someone who has performed at a level that the international community recognizes, consistently for a long period of time for people of the world to sit up and take notice of the person and the place that he/she comes from. Else, the person must have made immense contributions to a particular field, which has genuinely benefited large number of people. Now Shilpa doesn’t fit into any of these categories.

Yes, she did have a few weeks of international fame when she was constantly on TV in Big Brother, but people noticed her only after she was involved in that distasteful incident with a certain English lady. Maybe that too was by apparent fault of her’s. But the fact remains that Shilpa’s claim to international fame is very shallow and weak and one wonders when there are so many worthy candidates waiting for inspiration and recognition this award should not have gone to Shilpa. Again, the stress here is that Shilpa is not to blame for all the unnecessary attention and accolades that she is getting, she would be happier with a Filmfare. The idea is that, people who have the privilege sit round tables and decide who from our vast great country should be honored seem to be too dazzled or cornered by the world of entertainment and the attention grabbing capacity of page 3 that they lose perspective. What is your opinion?