Ramon Magsaysay Award
The Ramon Magsaysay Award is a prestigious annual award given to individuals and organisations in Asia who have achieved excellence in their respective fields and contributed to human development in doing so.
Awardees are either people from Asian countries or, occasionally, foreign citizens (people from outside Asia) who have worked, served, or accomplished something extraordinary in an Asian country. Hence it is considered Asia’s Nobel Prize.
The Award is given in six categories: Government Service; Public Service; Community Leadership; Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts; Peace and International Understanding; and Emergent Leadership.
Last year’s awardees (2023) were Korvi Rakshand from Bangladesh, Eugenio Lemos from Timor-Leste, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer from the Philippines, and Dr Ravi Kannan R. from India.
The Award was instituted in 1957 in honour of Ramon Magsaysay(1907 – 1957), a much-loved President of the Philippines, after the latter’s untimely death in a plane crash. It was established by the New York based Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund with the concurrence of the Philippines government to perpetuate Magsaysay’s example of integrity in government, courageous service to the people, and practical idealism within a democratic society. The Award is managed by the Ramon MagsaysayAward Foundation.
Prominent Indian awardees include Mother Teresa (1962) for Peace and International Understanding; Vinoba Bhave(1958), M S Swaminathan(1971) and Ela Bhatt of SEWA(1977) for Community Leadership; Satyajit Ray (1967), R K Laxman (1984), and Mahasweta Devi (1997) forJournalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts; Jayaprakash Narayan (1965) and M S Subbulakshmi (1971) for Public Service; and former Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan (1996) and Kiran Bedi, I.P.S, (1994) for Government Service.
