Nayantara Sahgal has recently been in news as she as returned the Sahitya Academy Award. She got this award in 1986. While it has been reported that she has returned the money as well, this page is an attempt to calculate the fair amount she actually owes.
This python program calculates the amounts due based upon different models. The assumptions used are:
- Rs. 50000 award money
- Interest rates models at 8%, 10%, 15% or 18% per annum
As reported in the Hindu article, she doesn't seem to remember well, what the award amount was, so I have just taken Rs. 50000.
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A good thing would be to modify this program based on the varying interest rates as are reported here. This should be fairly easy to do by writing another class modelling this varying rate of interest (just inherit from class BaseInterestModel). Perhaps, this would be the fair model to use.
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Gururaj pointed out that these awardees were given concessional prices for purchaing land by state/central governments. Hence, the money to be returned should also be based on the current prices of that land and the concessions given.
For those in hurry and don't want to run the program. Here's the current output of the program based on various possible models that might be used:
- Nayantara owes Sahitya Academy INR 465,863.74 (Interest of 8% per annum)
- Nayantara owes Sahitya Academy INR 793,154.65 (Interest of 10% per annum)
- Nayantara owes Sahitya Academy INR 2,878,772.69 (Interest of 15% per annum)
- Nayantara owes Sahitya Academy INR 6,075,027.05 (Interest of 18% per annum)
Since, she has only returned INR 100,000, I guess, she has to return the balance amount.