FIve distinguished personalities from Karnataka have been conferred with the Padma awards in 2021 following the tradition of the awards being announced on the eve of Republic Day. Dr Belle Monappa Hegde has been awarded the Padma Vibhushan for his excellence in the field of medicine.
The other four awardees from the state include Kannada poet Chandrashekhara Kambara who won Padma Bhusan under the Literature and Education category. Rangasami Lakshminarayana Kashyap, Matha B Manjamma Jogati and KY Venkatesh are the other three recipients who won Padma Shri awards under Literature and Education and Sports categories respectively.
The Padma Vibhushan is awarded for exceptional and distinguished personalities, the Padma Bhushan for distinguished service of high order. The Padma Shri is awarded for distinguished service in any field.
Though announced on January 25 every year, the awards are given to the recipients usually around March or April every year, in a ceremonial event at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Kambara is a popular Kannada poet, playwright and film director. He is also the found-Vice Chancellor of Hampi University in Karnataka. He was previously awarded the Padma Shri and Jnanapeeta awards. He was also a contemporary of late playwright Girish Karnad.
A scholar in the field of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Kashyap is currently a professor emeritus at Purdue University in the US as well as director of the Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture. He is a recipient of the King-Sun Fu award (1990) for fundamental contributors to pattern recognition for machine learning and has also been awarded the JC Bose Award for the best paper at the National Electronics Conference in the following year. He has also earned recognition by translating Rig Veda Samhita, Krishna Yajurveda Samhita and Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda.
He is a champion para-sportsman and disability rights activist who has achondroplasia (dwarfism). Among other achievements, he has represented India in International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Athletics World Championships. In his playing days, he had been a star performer in shotput and had won gold in a multi disability championship held in Australia in 1999. In 2005, he won six medals including two gold medals in the World Dwarf Games.
Currently the president of Karnataka Janapada Academy, Manjamma Jogati is a stalwart in the field of folk arts. Assigned male at birth, she witnessed hardship in the initial years due to her identity as a transgender woman. But although she had a life of destitute in her younger years after being disowned by her parents , she established herself as a celebrated theatre artist.She had to even lead her life by beginning for sometime before she joined the Jogathis— transgender persons who are ‘married’ to the Yellamma goddess. It is during her time as a Jogathi, she was introduced to folk artist Kaalavva and she entered the world of performing arts. She was awarded the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award in 2010