Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been awarded the 'Medical Education' Ig Nobel Prize 2020. The awards are shared by the Heads of State of Brazil, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Belarus, the United States, Turkey, Russia and Turkmenistan.
The Ig Nobel Prize is an annual satirical prize awarded by a journal called Annals of Improbable Research, which specialises in humorous coverage and scientific creation discussions. The prizes' name is a play on the word 'ignoble' which is an antonym of 'noble' and 'Nobel" name.
"The awards are presented by Nobel laureates at a grand, rather quirky, ceremony in the Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. The awardees have exactly 60 seconds to present their acceptance speech. A forbidding eight-year-old girl appointed for the purpose makes her displeasure known when the 60-second rule is violated. She simply gets on the stage and coos: ‘Please stop, I am bored.’ The trick works. Watched by a thousand-odd spectators in the theatre, who are also given the chance to shoot paper aeroplanes on to the stage, the event is telecast live on the internet" - As Sangeeta Balakrishnan, a professor of chemistry in Chennai, wrote for "The Wire"
But the case ,like many other activities – was totally online this year, owing to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The second Prime Minister to receive the award was Narendra Modi. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was earlier awarded with the 1998 Peace Award for "aggressively peaceful explosions of atomic bombs."
The 'Medical Education' award is granted 'for the use of the Covid-19 viral pandemic to show the world that politicians can have a more immediate impact on life and death than scientists and doctors can' and is shared by Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the United States, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan.