dr ambetkar.pdf

National / Opinion Polls MAGAZINE | AUG 20, 2012

GREATEST INDIAN POLL

A Measure Of The Man

www.outlookindia.com | A Measure Of The Man http://www.outlookindia.com/printarticle.aspx?281949

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For once, Ambedkar whips Nehru—and everyone else. This is how it unfolded...

UTTAM SENGUPTA

The Greatest Indians

Dr B.R.Ambedkar1.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam2.

Vallabhbhai Patel3.

Jawaharlal Nehru4.

Mother Teresa5.

J.R.D. Tata6.

Indira Gandhi7.

Sachin Tendulkar8.

A.B. Vajpayee9.

Lata Mangeshkar10.

* The final, cumulative ranking following the three-way poll (jury, online and on-ground) in two phases

***

***

Ranking By Jury

1. Jawaharlal Nehru

2. B.R. Ambedkar

3. Vallabhbhai Patel

4. J.R.D. Tata

0. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam

0. Indira Gandhi

0. Mother Teresa

0. Sachin Tendulkar


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0. Lata Mangeshkar

0. A.B. Vajpayee

In the second phase, the jury voted only for Nehru, Ambedkar, Patel and JRD. Five members of the jury failed to

cast their vote for anyone.

***

Ranking By Popular votes

B.R. Ambedkar 19,91,7341.

A.P.J.Abdul Kalam 13,74,4312.

Vallabhbhai Patel 5,58,8353.

A.B. Vajpayee 1,67,3784.

Mother Teresa 92,6455.

J.R.D. Tata 50,4076.

Sachin Tendulkar 47,7067.

Indira Gandhi 17,6418.

Lata Mangeshkar 11,5209.

Jawaharlal Nehru 9,92110.

After weeding out duplication and doubtful votes, 4.3 million popular votes by phone and on the website were

finally taken into account

***

Ranking By Market Research

A.P.J.Abdul Kalam1.

Indira Gandhi2.

Mother Teresa3.

Sachin Tendulkar4.

Jawaharlal Nehru5.

B.R. Ambedkar6.

Lata Mangeshkar7.

A.B. Vajpayee8.

Vallabhbhai Patel9.

J.R.D. Tata10.

The survey was conducted by AC Nielsen in 15 cities with a sample size of 1,027 in the second phase, the same

as the first one

***

“I am no worshipper of idols. I believe in breaking them.... I have hopes that my countrymen will

some day learn that the country is greater than the men; that the worship of Gandhi or Jinnah and

service to India are two very different things and may even be contradictory....”

—Dr B.R. Ambedkar, 1943

hat a juvenile idea!”—so exclaimed many Outlook readers when the poll to determine the Greatest Indian

after Gandhi, conducted in conjunction with CNN-IBN and History18 Channels with BBC, was first announced.

India, they said, is a great country with great many contributions from extraordinary men and women. But to

choose just one of them and anoint him or her the ‘greatest’? The idea appeared absurd to many, frightened

others, while the more paranoid saw in it a conspiracy to divide the country.


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Dr Ambedkar led

from the start,

polling more votes

in the second phase

than the rest of the

nine put together.

The majority were plainly outraged or sceptical. The greatest Indian after Gandhi is yet to be born, a few of our

readers said acerbically. Others questioned the ‘infantilisation’, the ‘crass commercialisation’ of the great while yet

others remonstrated that singling out the ‘greatest’ amounted to belittling the contribution of the rest. Another

section added their own names of the greats they felt we had missed out on, or ignored.

That the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had perfected the format over a period of time, in 21

countries, and that the hunt for the greatest Indian would be made once and only once, only partially put the

doubters at peace. That such a poll had earlier been successfully conducted in Great Britain, Germany and South

Africa—throwing up Winston Churchill, Konrad Adenauer and Nelson Mandela as the greatest Briton, German and

South African respectively—elicited the standard response: those countries were smaller, more homogeneous

and arguably far less complex than India.

Quite clearly, the search in India was not going to be easy. The greatest Indian would have to be one who had

affected the lives of the “maximum number of Indians for the better, since independence”. Leadership, genius and

compassion were to be the parameters.

It is interesting to note that similar polls in Europe had thrown up Alexander the Great in Greece and Leonardo da

Vinci in Italy. The possibilities in India would have been endless with Vyasa and Valmiki vying with the Buddha and

other all-time greats.

Conscious of the challenge and aware of the scepticism, Outlook and CNN-IBN settled on a three-way voting

process, with a 33 per cent weightage for each of the three constituents.

First, a jury comprising 28 eminent Indians was constituted to shortlist 50 nominees from a list of 100

Then, people were invited to vote online at thegreatestindian.in or through a missed call for their favourite.

Arrangements were made to ensure that one mobile phone or a landline could be utilised to register one

vote and eliminate duplication and bulk voting.

To make it even more error-free, polling agency ACNielsen was engaged to conduct a survey on the

ground and rank the finalists on the basis of an opinion poll with an admittedly small but representative

sample of 1,027 per phase.

The response to the poll in the social media was electric. The official ‘handle’ of History TV18 reached out to a

staggering 2,18,690 Twitter users every day during the first five weeks, the first phase in June. The Greatest

Indian page on Facebook was shared over 16,000 times and registered over 2,00,000 ‘likes, comments and

shares’.

After the first phase of voting, 10 highest vote-getters were shortlisted for the last

lap and people invited again to vote for the ‘greatest’ among the ten. To reduce

potential mischief through bulk voting, the jury was also invited to vote and rank the

10 finalists, and given the same weightage—one-third—as the popular vote.

ACNielsen repeated the ground survey in the second phase: this ranking too was

given similar weightage. Auditing firm Grant Thornton audited the entire process.

Despite such efforts, it’s possible that some groups took the poll more seriously

than others. There is also a regional skew, with people in some states casting far

more votes than in others and far few in others. The nominees too received more

votes from some states. The highest number of missed calls were received from Maharashtra, followed by Uttar

Pradesh and Gujarat.

Polls are rarely perfect. But they are the best indicators we have of how people view things. Dr Ambedkar led the

pack almost from the start, polling more popular votes in the final phase than the nine others polled together.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Vallabhbhai Patel were the other favourites; the rest lagged far behind. How they fared in

each of the three rankings is explained here.

“Dr Ambedkar’s legacy has

been distorted to suit particular

interests. He was a great

scholar, institution-builder and

economic theorist. To project

him as just a Dalit icon, or treat

“Sardar Patel stands much taller

than the rest. He died in 1950

but in less than 33 months, he

had united India, forcing over

500 princely states to fall in line,

and made India, fragmented at


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him like a prophet, does not do justice to his

memory.” Ramachandra Guha, Historian

birth, what it is today.” Arun Jaitley, Leader

of Opposition, Rajya Sabha

“Nehru made his share of

mistakes but he is more

maligned for the mistakes of

others. India owes its

industrialisation and

modernisation to Nehru. People

may say that his brand of socialism failed,

but for all we know, the market will also fail.”

Inder Malhotra, Veteran journalist

“The selection (of nominees)

speaks as much about

ourselves…. We still largely see

through Nehru’s eyes. Dr

Ambedkar stands very, very tall

(despite being ignored by the

mainstream). He was not just a Dalit icon but

a scholar as well.” Yogendra Yadav, Scholar

and academic

“Nehru stands streets ahead of

others. He was our spokesman

to the world. But Ambedkar, a

terrific radical scholar, whose

essay Annihilation of Caste

remains a shining model for

many of us, stands taller today than ever

before.” N. Ram, Veteran journalist

“While Nehru is likely to have

disproportionate representation,

Rajaji was a prophet before his

time. His advocacy of the free

market, as opposed to

Nehruvian socialism, appears to

have greater relevance and resonance today.”

Swapan Dasgupta, Journalist and

commentator

Popular Votes: Over 1.8 million votes were cast during the two-phase polling. Missed calls totalled more than 8

mn in the second phase alone and constituted more than 95 per cent of the votes polled. Besides, there were

online votes and endorsements on Facebook.

All votes were then audited by Grant Thornton to weed out duplication, bulk and doubtful votes. Eventually, 4.3

mn votes were considered for the final reckoning in the second and final phase.

Only four of the 10 finalists, however, turned out to be serious contenders. While Ambedkar was a runaway

winner with 1.9 mn popular votes in the second phase, Kalam (1.3 mn), Patel (5,58,000) and A.B. Vajpayee

(1,67,000) were the only ones who received some semblance of popular support.

Astonishingly, the widely acknowledged first family of Indian politics fared poorly. Jawaharlal Nehru was left

tottering last in the list with less than 10,000 votes. Indira Gandhi fared marginally better, polling over 17,000

votes.

The remaining four in the top 10 were not statesmen or politicians. A cricketer, an industrialist, a saintly social

worker and a legendary singer were the others in the reckoning. While Mother Teresa led this pack with over

92,000 votes, J.R.D. Tata followed with just over 50,000 while Sachin Tendulkar secured 47,000 votes. Curiously,

the singer who continues to move and stir the nation with her melodious voice, Lata Mangeshkar, received only

11,000 votes.

Market research: The ground survey conducted by Nielsen, however, placed Kalam at the top, with 19.8 per

cent of the respondents describing him as the greatest Indian after Gandhi. Significantly, the random survey with

a sample size of 2,000 placed Indira in second place and Mother Teresa in the third. Tendulkar and Nehru

occupied the fourth and fifth slots, securing 12.6 and 12.5 per cent of the endorsements.

Dr Ambedkar, who received the highest number of popular votes and was ranked second by the jury, occupied

the sixth slot in the survey. Indeed, compared to the 12.5 per cent endorsement for Nehru, Ambedkar was

endorsed by only 7.7 per cent of these respondents, indicating that top-of-the-mind recall is still higher for Nehru.

The jury: The members were overwhelmingly of the opinion that Nehru remains the greatest Indian after Gandhi.

And while the members did place Dr Ambedkar in second place, he actually received just six votes compared to

the 14 for Nehru.

While two of the jury members voted for Vallabhbhai Patel and one for J.R.D. Tata, none of the others cut any ice

with any of the jury members. Neither Indira nor Vajpayee or anyone else received a single vote from the jury.


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