The Noble(el) Prize from Jamtara (Jharkhand)

There could be a lot of minimally educated people who have heard about the noble(el) prize. Almost everyone, even having a minimal amount of general knowledge, knows that the noble(el) prize has something to do with being great in their field or famous.

The noble(el) academy states in its charter some very specific conditions in choosing the winner. The most important being, that it can at the maximum be shared by three persons. And some follow on clauses. Since 1901, the Noble(el) Prize has been honoring men and women from across the globe for their outstanding contributions in the field of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for work in peace.

If even by now, you have some confusion as to the spelling of the Nobel / Noble prize, trust me you are in the 50% of people who would have this confusion.

By the way, as per dictionary; Noble means, belonging by rank, title, or birth to the aristocracy, whereas, Nobel just follows from Alfred's name. Regardless of Whether, you knew or not, the right spelling of the Nobel prize, kindly read along, because they both sound the same.

On that day, I attended a talk given by a professor from Karolinska University at our office. It was a very nice talk which tried to analyze why India is not producing many nobel prize winners. I also ended up doing some search on Google on the subject that night and slept. In the morning, due to my search history analysis, Google was throwing a lot of articles related to the Nobel prize to me.

But the next morning, I received a noble prize nomination email sent to me. It claimed that, I had been nominated by my deputy general manager for a noble prize for the fabulous work, I had been doing making aerospace grade fasteners.

Now, obviously, I knew this was someone screwing with me. But just out of curiosity, I indulged myself in this email. It had attachments from "The Noble Foundation" also along with it. What surprised me was, it had all the Trademark and Copyright registration numbers. But of course, you had to make a payment of Rs 150 for your registration to be confirmed.

After a lot of research, I came to know that 'The Noble Foundation' was registered in Jamtara (Jharkhand). And one 10th pass, pan-wala Ashok was the registered proprietor of this foundation. They had all the government paperwork for it.

Well they even had their whatsapp mobile number in the email. So I ended up chatting with Ashok from Jamtara. After talking to him, I understood that they were running a legitimate foundation. Since, Noble and Nobel sound similar, he had applied for Trademark and Copyrights for the phrases "The Noble Prize" and "The Noble Foundation". It was a registered startup from Jamtara (Jharkhand), which was planning to pitch in Shark Tank also. They basically gave you a 3D printed Noble Prize Medal with a certificate from The Noble Foundation for Rs 150.

This stupid encounter put me into thinking something serious. Why cant India, strive to not only establish itself in foreign arenas as a candidate or winner, but also to establish a medal of international repute in its own name. How many Indians must be aware that the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, is the highest honor in the field of science, given by India.

If India must establish itself as a soft power, it's not enough to aspire for nobel prizes alone. But also to establish awards of international recognition with India as its prime seat.