10 million tree planter Daripalli Ramaiah among Padma awardees that include Yesudas, Anuradha Paudwal and Virat Kohli

Padma Shri awarded to  Daripalli Ramaiah, who has planted over 1 crore trees and is nicknamed ‘Tree Man’

The government of India on Wednesday, January 25, 2017 announced Padma awards to citizens of the country in recognition of their distinguished contribution in various spheres.
These awards are conferred by the President of India at ceremonial functions which are held at Rashtrapati Bhawan usually around March/ April every year. This year the President of India has approved conferment of Padma Awards to 89 persons that include  7 Padma Vibhushan, 7 Padma Bhushan and 75 Padma Shri Awardees. 19 of the awardees are women and the list also includes 5 persons from the category of foreigners, NRIs, PIOs and 6 posthumous awardees.

 

Padma Vibhushan awardees include Shri K J Yesudas and Sadguru  Jaggi Vasdev, Sh. Murali Manohar Joshi, Prof. Udipi Ramchandra Rao, Late Sh. Sunder Lal Patwa(Posthumous) and Late Sh. P A Sangma.

The other big names on the 2017 Padma list are Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli, hockey captain PR Sreejesh, Olympic bronze medallist Sakshi Malik, gymnast Dipa Karmakar who put up a spirited performance at Rio Olympics, Kailash Kher and Anuradha Paudwal, mohan veena player and Grammy Awards winner Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, spiritual leader Ratna Sundar Maharaj, yoga exponent Swami Niranjana Nanda Saraswati and political satirist Cho Ramaswamy (posthumous).

The list features many unsung heroes who’ve been honoured for working tirelessly for the public good, and for promoting traditional crafts without caring to be in the limelight. The 2017 list doesn’t feature a single Bollywood star. The only two actors honoured with the Padma Shri are Sadhu Meher from Odisha – who acted in the 1974 Hindi film ‘Ankur – and Bharathi Vishnuvardhan from Karnataka.

The list of unsung heroes also features Daripalli Ramaiah, who has planted over 1 crore trees and is nicknamed ‘Tree Man,’ a Kolkata fire-fighting volunteer who decided to devote his life to rescuing people from fires after losing his brother to one, and Dr Subroto Das, who set up the Lifeline Foundation in Gujarat to help road accident victims after realising the poor state of emergency services during his own accident.
There’s also a 91-year-old gynaecologist who has been treating patients for free for 68 years and has delivered thousands of babies, an engineer – Girish Bharadwaj – who has built over 100 suspension bridges, a tea garden worker – Karimul Haque – who converted his bike into a free 24×7 ambulance, Swachch Bharat pioneer Dr Mapuskar, Genabhai Dargabhai Patel, a physically challenged farmer who transformed the drought-prone Banaskantha into India’s largest pomegranate producer, and Shekhar Naik, the captain of the Indian visually-challenged cricket team who led it to victory in the T-20 World Cup 2012 and ODI World Cup 2014.

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