Hari Om Ashram Prerit Senior Scientist Award(HOAPSSA)

Overview

About HOAPSSA

The Physical Research Laboratory lists four awards it administers, and three of them can turn a nominee away on a birth date alone. This one cannot. Its call asks for an eminent Indian scientist whose contributions in Science and Technology have been innovative and outstanding, and it pays a silver plaque, a citation and a cash prize of Rs 4,00,000 (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call). No form is published, no discipline is named, no year of birth is fixed. The single hard requirement is that somebody else writes your name down.

Nothing about this award behaves like a scholarship, and the education category it is filed under sends people looking for the wrong things. No course attaches to it, no stipend runs across a tenure, no income is tested. The money is an endowment from the Hari Om Ashram at Nadiad, given in memory of the birth centenary of Pujya Shri Mota, the ashram's founder, and PRL runs the award from Ahmedabad as a unit of the Department of Space (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call).

Breadth is what makes it unusual inside PRL's own stable. The Hari Om Ashram Prerit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award divides itself into four named disciplines and stops at scientists below 45 years of age (PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call), and the PRL Award, instituted by the late Prof. Devendra Lal, reads only Earth and planetary systems under the same age rule (PRL, PRL Award). The senior scientist call draws none of those lines. Science and Technology is the whole of its subject field, and no year of birth appears anywhere in the text.

How wide that reads in practice is not a matter of inference. PRL's annual report for 2007 to 2008 records the award going to Prof. M. S. Swaminathan of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai (PRL, Annual Report 2007 to 2008), an agricultural scientist honoured by a laboratory whose own research programme is space, atmospheric and planetary science. A nomination from outside the physical sciences is not a stretch of this call.

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

PRL states an alternate-year cycle for the other awards it runs and states no cycle for this one (PRL, PRL Award; PRL, Senior Scientist Award call). What the page carries is one closing date and one caption.

Read that closing date for exactly what it is. It belongs to the most recent call PRL has posted for this award, and the same date sits on the PRL Award page, which suggests the two went out in one round (PRL, PRL Award). Nothing newer has replaced it, PRL has published no withdrawal, and the page is still up: the last published call closed on 20 October 2021 and has not been replaced. The only two conferments PRL records among its own associates, in 2008 and 2016, are eight years apart (PRL, Awards), and that page follows people connected with the laboratory rather than every recipient, so it is a partial view and not a timetable to plan around.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

Indian citizenship and standing as a scientist are the entire written test. PRL asks for an eminent Indian scientist and for contributions in Science and Technology that are innovative and outstanding, and the call adds nothing to that (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call).

The silence reads differently once you have seen the sibling calls on the same site, which are dense where this one is bare. They fix a date on which age is counted, name the disciplines they accept, and specify how the publication list must be built, down to a separately listed ten best papers (PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call). None of those handles exists here. Nothing rules out a scientist working in a university department, a national laboratory, a hospital research wing or an industrial research group, and nothing rules a field in.

What operates instead is comparison. PRL's own record of awards held by people connected with the laboratory shows the senior award going to U.R. Rao in 2008 and to K. Kasturirangan in 2016 (PRL, Awards). Press coverage of the 2015 conferment, to Professor T V Ramakrishnan, listed earlier recipients: A P J Abdul Kalam as the first, then R Chidambaram, C N R Rao, R A Mashelkar, M G K Menon, Yash Pal and Anil Kakodkar (Times of India, Prestigious PRL award for Ramakrishnan). A file is read next to that company rather than against a checklist.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

PRL bars nobody from this award in writing, and the central scheme record carries the same blank. The thing that shuts people out is the absence of a route in.

A scientist cannot enter their own name. The call names the people who may sign a nomination, the nominee is not among them, and merit with no willing proposer never reaches the Director's desk. There is not even a format to fail on: the PRL Award page publishes a nomination proforma and the Vikram Sarabhai page specifies how publications must be listed, while this page publishes neither (PRL, PRL Award; PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call).

The clause a nominator will look for and not find is the one about coming back. Both sibling pages state that a nominee carried over from an earlier year has to be put forward again through a fresh nomination (PRL, PRL Award; PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call). The senior scientist call says nothing about what becomes of an unsuccessful file, so nobody should assume one is being held anywhere. Where a successful nominee ends up is settled: past recipients of the award appear among the people entitled to nominate.

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Renewal needs something to renew, and this award closes on the day it is handed over. The plaque, the citation and the cash arrive together, and PRL attaches no reporting duty, no second instalment, no continuing title and no condition a recipient could later break (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call).

What you get

Award & benefits

The cash has doubled inside a decade. Press coverage of the 2015 conferment put the cash component at Rs 2 lakh (Times of India, Prestigious PRL award for Ramakrishnan). The call PRL has posted since then doubles that figure, to Rs 4,00,000 (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call). The plaque has no counterpart anywhere else in the laboratory's award set, and neither does the citation that goes with it.

Nothing in the text ties the money to a research project, a host institution or an account to be settled afterwards. It reads work already finished, and it is the recipient's.

• Award Amount: ₹4,00,000/-
• Recognition: Silver Plaque and Citation

What to prepare

Documents required

The call asks for nominations to be submitted as per the above guidelines, and the guidelines it points at are not on the page (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call). Everything above that sentence describes the award; none of it describes a dossier. A nominator working from PRL's site alone has an instruction and no specification.

The central scheme record fills the gap with a short set assembled by the nominator rather than by the scientist, and against the sibling calls it is conspicuously loose. The Vikram Sarabhai page caps the contribution note at two pages, demands the ten best publications as a separate listing it calls essential, and takes reprints as e-files only (PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call); the PRL Award page adds a proforma to download (PRL, PRL Award). Neither reaches this award. That leaves the statement of contribution carrying the weight, since it is the only document in the set that argues rather than lists.

Step by step

How to apply

There is nothing to apply for. A nomination goes by e-mail to the Director of PRL, and the call prescribes the subject line it has to carry: nomination for the Hari Om Ashram Prerit Senior Scientist Award (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call). The address is printed on the award page in an anti-spam form, as the Director at prl.res.in.

Who may send it is a closed list, and it runs one name longer than the research award's: a Dean of a university may sign here and cannot sign there (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call; PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call). Everyone else on it holds an institutional office or an academy fellowship, or has held this award already. A colleague, a department, a learned society and the scientist themselves all sit outside it, which is why a nomination in practice begins in a research dean's office rather than with the person being honoured.

Tracking is where expectations need resetting, and this award hands a nominator less to work with than its siblings do. The PRL Award at least attaches a proforma and a second mailbox for publication e-copies, so a file leaves two marks (PRL, PRL Award); here the whole submission is one message with one subject line, and the call describes no acknowledgement, no reference number and no status page against it. The roll that would confirm a decided cycle is shut, because the recipients list PRL links from the award page, captioned 1998 to 2018, does not open to the public. Where a cycle has been decided, it surfaces later in PRL's own reporting, which is how U.R. Rao's award for 2008 reached the record (PRL, Annual Report 2009-10). Anything a nominator needs confirmed before that has only the laboratory's general correspondence channels (PRL, Contact).

How winners are picked

Selection process

No selection rule is published for this award at all, and the omission is sharper than it first looks. Every other award PRL administers states the same weighting: although a candidate's overall work is taken into account, work done in India is given prime consideration (PRL, PRL Award; PRL, Vikram Sarabhai Research Award call; PRL, Buti Foundation Award). The senior scientist call sets no standard, names no committee and describes no stage between the closing date and an announcement.

Awards funded from the same Nadiad endowment show what the alternative looks like. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research publishes rules for its Hari Om Ashram Trust Award that name a judging committee appointed by its Director General, seat a nominee of the Trust on that committee, list the evaluation criteria, and state that no award is given at all if no entry is judged outstanding (ICAR, Hari Om Ashram Trust Award: Rules). The University Grants Commission, running its own set on a Hari Om Ashram Trust endowment, has nominations scrutinised by a committee of experts that may add names of its own before the Commission decides (UGC, Hari Om Ashram Trust Awards). A nominator to PRL has none of that to calibrate a file against, and should argue the science rather than the fit.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Everything binding on this award fits inside the few sentences on one web page, and a nominator who has read them has read the whole rulebook. The honour goes to an individual, since the text speaks throughout of an eminent Indian scientist rather than a team or an institution; the nomination has to carry a permitted signature; and the plaque, the citation and the cash are described with no condition on how any of them is used (PRL, Senior Scientist Award call).

Tax treatment, a lecture obligation, an acknowledgement rule in later publications, a clause on splitting an award between two scientists or on withholding it in a lean year: none of that is written down anywhere PRL publishes, so none of it can be stated here. What governs the rest is the laboratory's discretion as the administering body.

Get help

Contact

One office handles this award, and the page names no second desk, no awards cell and no coordinator. The PRL Award routes publication e-copies to a separate mailbox of its own (PRL, PRL Award); nothing here is split off anywhere, so the prescribed subject line is doing the routing on its own.

Correspondence that is not a nomination belongs on the general channels the laboratory publishes with its Ahmedabad address (PRL, Contact). The observatory sites listed there have nothing to do with this award.

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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