Padma Awards - Is there a North-South divide?

Is there really a bias against southern India, while dishing out the padma awards. I thought about this, when a few days back I got to know that one of the greatest actresses of the Indian cinema, who is also a Guinness world record holder for the maximum number of movies, and to my knowledge the only real female comedienne in Indian cinema, Ms. Manorama (Tamil Actress) was awarded a Padmashri only in 2002. This is, after working in 1,500 movies for almost 50 years. It is a shame that she has been recognized after such a long time where as Madhuri Dixit gets an award after may be 20 years of work. It is not that Madhuri Dixit's body of work is far better than that of Manorama. Do not mistake me, I am a big fan of Madhuri Dixit. I am just not comfortable with the unfair treatment meted out.

On further digging I found that Ilayaraja, the maestro in music, has still not been awarded a single Padma award, it is a shame for the country. Ilayaraja has been recognized internationally. How can I forget our very own Rajinikant, even he has not been awarded any Padma award yet. Shahrukh Khan has already received one. What is the criteria that Shahrukh Khan satisfied but Rajinikant did not? I feel it is just because of the larger audience and a greater exposure for Hindi movies and the marketing that is done for such movies. If iconic status was the reason, then Rajini had it before Shahrukh and still continues to have it. Do you see a pattern emerging here.

Similarly, Mani Ratnam, Semmengudi Srinivas Iyer, S.P.Balasubramaniam had been ignored for a long time before they got their Padma Shri awards a few years ago. All these people I mentioned are stalwarts and are not in any ways dependent on any of these awards, but this definitely points out a flaw in the way the awards are decided. These artists are and would remain great forever, irrespective of the awards. I am glad that at least artists like KamalHassan, A.R.Rehman were felicitated, at the right time, and not ignored.

I know some artists have vented out their anger at the system in the past and have in fact returned the awards back to the government of India for not recognizing their talent when it should have been. I think this is a part of a bigger problem, of not recognizing our talent in due time. It took a G.H Hardy, a great mathematician, a British, to recognize Ramanujam's mathematical genius. I hope we learn from our mistakes and are balanced in our treatment towards anyone and everyone.