The Prodigy Who Was Not    by Anurag Sharma

In early 2005, Indian radio, newspapers and television kept praising the achievements of Saurabh Singh. He was a village lad from Narhai village in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh. He claimed to top NASA’s International Talent Discovery (ISD) competition. Next paragraphs show a few glimpses of what media spoke about his achievements:

His father, a school teacher, had to scrape the bottom of his savings to enable him to appear for the final round of the test in London. Now, NASA will take care of all his higher education needs if he continues to excel in his studies. It is the same test that brought out the talent in the late Kalpana Chawla, who became the first Indian woman astronaut, and Mr A.P. J. Abdul Kalam, who headed India’s space programme and eventually became the President. What is common about all the three is that they all come from small towns and ordinary middle class families. They could do well only because they could use the opportunities to study and their parents saw merit in educating their children.

According to him, the preliminary ISD examination was conducted in Jaipur on September 26 . "As many as 200,000 students appeared in the examination. As soon as the result was declared in October, I got a call at my native place from Bansal to inform me that I had cleared the examination and that I was now eligible to take the main examination to be held at London and Sydney."



"The President kept his appointment and I had a very inspiring 18-minute meeting with him at the Rashtrapati Bhawan" he asserted in an interview.

Then UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav declared a 500,000 award and scholarship for the telented boy who made the nation and his state proud. Hundreds of articles were written about the success story... until the truth was revealed.

The truth was discovered within a few months. Not from media but from the President's office. President's office denied any claims of Dr Kalam ever meeting with the boy or even taking any such exam in the past. The president's spokesman, SM Khan, told the media that, contrary to widespread reports, President Kalam had never sat for such an examination. Later, Nasa spokeswoman Debbie Rahn, reported on the BBC News website: "I have been unable to confirm that such an exam exists. I have checked all the appropriate offices in Nasa." Prime Minister's press adviser Sanjaya Baru later anounced that his meeting with the PM has been cancelled after the president's statement.

Saurabh Singh hadn’t appeared for any talent discovery exam. Also, NASA is not aware of any such exams. But the Indian media, hungry for a national hero, grabbed the story, made it into a headline without bothering the authenticity of the storyline. But the prime minister's press adviser Sanjaya Baru said that the meeting has been cancelled after the president's statement. Mulayam Singh later withdrew the award.

Saurabh's case raises several questions. First one is obvious, why do we keep looking for heroes. It leads to other more important questions. Why the media gets so lazy when it comes to the responsibility of checking the credentials of a headline. The leaders and government officials not only allow the cheats to meet them and make use of this meeting to become more powerful, they announce awards from the tax money to encourage more liars to come up with stories like this.