title: Doctors and Padma awards.
abstract: BACKGROUND; The announcement of the annual Padma awards in January always generates a great deal of interest as well as controversy and, some believe that many good candidates are excluded and many less deserving ones included. We analysed the recipients in the field of medicine to determine whether or not a pattern emerged regarding who were bestowed these honours. We were not able to objectively evaluate whether or not the honours were 'deserved'.
  
  
  METHODS
  We obtained and then analysed the list of awardees from newspapers and the official website of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 1166 awards were announced, of which 157 (13.4%) were in the field of medicine. We excluded foreigners and those from 'alternative' fields (20), and evaluated the remaining 137 in detail.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Sixty-two (45.3%) recipients were from Delhi, 18 (13.1%) from Maharashtra and 17 (12.4%) from Tamil Nadu. Of the 137 awardees, 31 (22.6%) were cardiologists or cardiac surgeons. Many large states of the country, such as West Bengal, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, did not have a single awardee.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The over-representation of Delhi and cardiology in the Padma awards for medicine suggests that their distribution is not entirely fair.
authors.affiliation: NDTV Convergence, 207 Okhla Phase III, New Delhi 110031, India.
authors.forename: Bhawna
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Arya
authors.forename: Parul R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Chopra
authors.forename: Manisha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goel
authors.forename: Anuj
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Anurag
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Krishna
authors.forename: Samiran
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nundy
mesh_terms: D001363:Awards and Prizes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D010820:Physicians; D012111:Residence Characteristics