As the awards season approaches, a poet and editor offers some suggestions to the Sahitya Akademi The awards, publishing, journal and events strategies of the Akademi have continued unchanged for years, says Medha Singh. Sahitya Akademi Award The Sahitya Akademi awards are considered among the most prestigious literary accolades in the country, with good reason. But the awards, and many of the Akademi’s other activites, have continued in unchanged form for a long time. Perhaps some change – or, at the very least, re-examination – is in order. Yuva Puraskar There are two reasons the Akademi should remove the age category and start an award for best debut and perhaps best second book in prose and poetry in each language. For one thing, the patronising and sexist connotations that accompany the prefixes “young” or “emerging” attached to a writer are unnecessary. A man gets to be called young or “in his prime” well into his forties in India, while a woman surrenders her badge of youth the moment she hits the big three O.