Manthan Award South Asia 2009 – Grand Jury held at New Delhi, INDIA

by Pritam Sinha(pritam@defindia.net)

After almost 6 months of hectic activities related to seeking and getting nominations, (380 to be exact), the Manthan Award South Asia Grand Jury ’09 was held at New Delhi, INDIA during October 08 to 10, 2009.
 
When the 20 member Manthan Award Grand Jury ’09 entered the boardroom for choosing or de-selecting the best of these 360 nominations received under 13 various categories (Check http://manthanaward.org) (20 odd were already eliminated on various grounds during the internal scrutiny process), the place was abuzz with excitement and anticipation as for the past last few weeks, DEF’s office phones hardly stopped ringing from enquiries from many nominees in the past few weeks. The Jurors, many of them were also part of previous year’s Grand Jury too, were seen visibly excited not to speak of many fresh faces, part of the judging process for the very first time who were justifiably eager and curious.

The Chairman of the Manthan Award and Founder & Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), Osama Manzar duly welcomed all the Grand Jurors and apprised them to the tasks during the 3 day intense process ahead. “It demands your full attention,” he cautioned the debutants especially.

Everybody introduced themselves as their first duty and having become familiarized, (the Grand Jurors are selected randomly from different walks of life every year, mind you), they were divided into 9 sets of 2 people each and were given a combined total of 40 nominations plus attachments, if any, to look into in the next day and a half.

The Jurors started their evaluation process in right earnest and soon they were ‘lost’ into the nominations. All the Jurors were browsing their sets fast and also checking the veracity of any web linkages that might have provided with, either given as part of the form or through any offline material that might have been provided to the Secretariat. Also, noting down their expert opinions on each of them in the Online box in the software they were given by DEF for future reference and possible group discussion points. This process went on till next day (09 Oct ’09) mid afternoon.

Post lunch, the Grand Jurors started discussing the top ranked nominations from each category and, yes, voting for this year’s Manthan Winners. The Chairman took his stage in the well of the Board Room and started listing the top nominations on a chart sheet per category with every juror giving his verdict on the nomination just seen and putting every issue for other Jurors to throw light upon with the Chairman moderating the intense and often witty discussions. It made for some very intense and lively at the same time light hearted insights for those who were inside the board room. It was learning and pure fun.

The process went on and on and each category taking hours of debating and voting for Winners and Special Mentions.
 
The enthusiasm of the Grand Jurors, both older ones and the new ones alike, was a joy to behold.
 
Anyway, when 5 categories were done with, it was already late night and everybody thought to come back afresh next morning.
 
Pronto at 9 am, the Grand Jurors started arriving and the process restarted amid a light working breakfast thrown in between the continuing debate and voting to ensure continuity and to maintain the flow of activities.

By 4 pm, all the categories were done with and altogether 45 Winners including Special Mentions came out of this day and a half yearly churning. By this hour, the Chief Guest and honorary Juror, Mr. N. Ravi Shankar from the Government of India, Department of Technology also joined and he gave all the Grand Jurors a small momento of the Manthan Award symbol of 2 horns of a cow along with a Citation for their honorary work in the past 3 days.

Thereafter, the DEF backend staff were introduced and given thanks by the Jurors and the Chairman. A photo session after, it was time for all the Jurors to re-assemble for a Special Photo Session which everybody enjoying having competed an ordeal of 3 days taking time of their busy schedules, with each one of them taking time off from their day-to-day routine life. They had pride in their eyes and one could see the satisfaction of having done a momentous work by all of them.  All exchanged emails and cards etc for further contacts and interactions.

Already people were looking forward to coming together next year round, with or without the same partners. 

So, all the Winners are in the bag. The bag itself will be opened during the 2 day Digital Inclusion Summit & Gala on Dec 18 & 19 ’09 at New Delhi itself. All the Jurors will be there to see the organizations and persons they have chosen as Best practitioners. An elaborate Summit is also planned along with the Gala.

Be posted to http://manthanaward.org for all the details and related issues.