PADMA VIBHUSHAN

By Arvind Aaron

V.Anand, World Chess Champion has been chosen this month by the Government of India for the Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award in India.

This must have been granted in recognition of his winning the World Chess Championship twice and being such a charming role model in Indian sports. Our
hearty congratulations to Vishy Anand.

The year 2007 was one of the best for Anand. He had become the World's top rated player in the April 2007 FIDE Rating List and has maintained it till now.
More importantly, he had won the World Championship for the second time in September 2007 at Mexico.

This year, Anand, the gentleman that he is, has agreed to play the 2008 World Championship Match against Vladimir Kramnik at Bonn, Germany in October. Kramnik had made it a condition when he played Topalov last year that in the event of his winning against Topalov, he should be the Challenger to the 2007 World Champion. And he did win against the then World Champion Topalov in a turbulent Match.

Nothing is ever simple in FIDE. They are now organizing a Match between the 2007 World Cup winner Gata Kamsky and the 2006 World Champion Veselin
Topalov of Bulgaria calling it the World Chess Championship Semi Final Match 2008. With the names of the 2008 World Championship Match contestants already known (Anand and Kramnik), what would the purpose of this match be? It was stated earlier that the winner of this match would play a Re-Unification Match with the winner of the Anand-Kramnik Match. We can only guess that the winner of the 2008 Semi-Final Match would play in the 2009 World Championship Match Final. Quite unclear!

If our memory is right, the Kramnik-Topalov Match was known as the Unification Match. Every time there is a change in the match format by FIDE the beneficiaries have always been Anand's contemporaries: Kasparov,
Kramnik and Topalov. Never Anand! Unfortunately, players who defy FIDE and refuse to play Matches are welcomed back.

The infamous Prague agreement by FIDE in 2002 brazenly manoeuvred the 2000-2001 World Champion Anand out of the World Championship by bringing in Kasparov and Kramnik for top matches in the name of Unification.
The influential Russian Chess Federation ensured that Anand stayed out of the World Championship. Anand knew that injustice was being done to him, but he kept his cool and never protested. And the Indian who attended all FIDE meetings in his capacity of Vice President of FIDE and Secretary of AICF did nothing.

Nice guys are usually taken for granted. Though Anand is too nice a guy to call a spade a spade we hope his Managers would use his great standing in International Chess to bring about transparent rules and conditions in FIDE so that any chess player in the world would know five years in advance what he has to do to reach the pinnacle of world chess.
 

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Published on 04^th  Feb, 2008