The Election Pressure
The Nobel Peace Prize for Obama this week was a surprising one, ofcourse to everyone.
The question that was raised was
1. Is Nobel Peace Prize an award for accomplishment..?
2. Is Nobel Peace Prize an award for encouragement..?
I don’t have a doubt that Obama’s tone in terms of Climate Change, Nuclear Arsenal, Friendly relationship with muslim countries, Countering terrorism without religious color are perfectly right. I also agree that he has definitely cooled down the world tempers and has challenged Al-Qaeda and Taliban right at the source point.
But still action wise, there is a lot to be achieved.
Climate Change and Nuclear Disarmament are subjects that could cause election defeat to Obama. He is a serving politician. In the next election, he may be forced to reverse some of his tones, purely due to political pressure, as he needs to sustain. Then the reason for this Nobel peace prize gets lost.
Also based on the situation in the next election, it is highly possible that Obama hardens his stand or shifts more to the right-wing in many issues including relationship with Muslim countries or dealing with Taliban/Al-Qaeda.
The Prestige Pressure
Will this Nobel Peace Prize make Obama to sacrifice his electoral victory in the next election..? Will it make him stick to his tones and go further on it..?
I would say that the Nobel Peace Prize Committe got carried away by its own impression of the ‘Prestige’ of Nobel Peace Prize and thought it is setting a steep target for Obama, which he would not refuse to climb, due to the ‘Prestige’ pressure that Nobel Peace Prize is creating on him.
The truth of the matter is probably half the population of the world would not know about this peace prize and the other half may not bother about it much in real terms. Neither it helps to win an election. Nor it helps to sustain real life.
In fact it would help Obama’s opponents who would depict every move of Obama as Anti-American and that caters to his image of Nobel Peace Prize Winner. This tactical move by Obama’s opponents may force Obama to move more right-wing to prove his commitment to ‘American’ cause. Hence this Nobel peace prize may be totally counter-productive on Obama.
The success of Nobel Peace Prize all this time was that it was a human recognition of the work done by humans for the society. Ofcourse like everything in this world, recognition of Nobel peace prize also does not last long more than few hours of that event. Yet for the few hours, many significant parts of the world dedicate their thoughts to the people who won the award, get some directions and ideals from what they achieved in life.
Simply put, Nobel peace prize served as a beacon of the directions and values that humans measured themselves often. In my view, it has no ability to create a prestige pressure on the individuals, as it is of no use in ordinary life. In fact it may prove to be an obstacle to Obama’s administration.
The Q for Nobel
Coming to Encouragement, there are umpteen number of people in this world, who need to be encouraged. From the junior researcher sitting in the corner of a Lab dreaming to invent something new for the world to the hard-working laborer making his way up in life due to sheer hard-effort and nothing else, there a re billions of people in this world, including myself, who need to be encouraged.
I just wonder if Venki would have got his Noble Peace Prize for molecular biology, if he had just started his work on mapping atomic structure of mRNA, as a matter of encouragement ? Or for that matter most other scientists who got the award would not have got it, if they have not got the result?.
-TBT
