Who is the Vice-president of India ???

Who is the current vice-president of India(as on Feb 18 2010)?

Bhairon Singh Shekhawat?  Naaah ?

Hey, It is not a quiz here. I have been asking this question to many people i came across since few weeks, and not surprisingly, very very few could answer. Many of them include software engineers, students, government employees, IAS aspirants(ahem!), NRIs etc. The first thing I noticed in them is that though they had the  answer somewhere in the grey areas of their busy brain and they were unable to retrieve  it from the hidden database. Some were totally blank when they faced this question.  Few of them asked/doubted whether i know the answer or not.  One of my friends felt relieved when he told me the answer after few minutes of database mining . Interestingly, few people were so obsessed with this question that they took time to find out the answer. Some of them smsed the answer after a day or two. Of course some embarrassments for civil service aspirants who chewed water and gave some lame excuses.  The most common  and first answer i got from most of them is  that our vice-president is a 'Muslim'. Am not sure how many of you are going to search in Google or Wikipedia to find the answer.

My concern is not the answer but the reason for missing the answer. Is it because of the scarce media attention vice-president gets ? Is it because that he is just a symbolic head of some legislative body? Is it because of the happening factor that every bit of data is readily available for us in just few clicks ? Is it the name of the vice-president which is quite uncommon to remember? Is it because of the word 'vice' which means sub ordinate?  Is it because of our life style and changing attitudes ? Is it because of the diminishing trend towards the static data?  Is it because that we will  know about him in future when he becomes President of India, probably. May be, i guess, it is quite common and natural to ignore vice-presidents, irrespective of the period we live in.

Am not going to draw any conclusions from this question. I know that it doesn't matter whether we know the answer or not. The most embarrassing moment can be when a kid will pose this question to us. This post is an attempt to create an opportunity to know more about the vice president of India, who is quite multi faceted academician and intellectual. He is really a Wise-President.What made me to write this post is the sentence i came across which was quoted by the current Vice-president of India.

"No citizen is apolitical; as a citizen, by definition, has to take interest in public affairs."

By the way, have you googled or wikipeded for the answer?

PS: To know his name as well as about him, click

1. http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/profile.asp