OPINION has been sharply divided as to who is a greater menace: the sports federations, the Sports Ministry or the Sports Mminister himself. I have been admonished by my seniors for siding with the federations, who, said they, have ruined Indian sports.
Sports Minister MS Gill: Theatre of the absurd is what he is lording over.
Speaking for myself, my verdict is clear: there cannot be one word – like ‘menace’ – to describe all of them. The federations – with some exceptions – are a nuisance; the ministry is an infertile weakling, but the real menace is the minister himself.
The entire country was shocked when MS Gill snubbed Gold-winning wrestler Sushil Kumar’s coach and wrestling great Satpal Singh, repeating his obnoxious act of earlier being openly rude to badminton great Pulella Gopichand, coach of India’s golden girl Saina Nehwal.
“Who are you?” Singh had asked Gopichand when the latter wanted to share the frame in a photo-opp with his pupil and the minister himself.
Not exposed to the West, I am not aware how they deal with their tutors, but in 21st century India, still, the Sanskrit sloka holds good: Gururbrahma, gururvishnu, gururdevo maheshwaram, gurureva parambrahma, tashmaye shree guravey namoh! (The Guru is above Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar, in fact, the Guru is above Parambrahma, the Highest. That Guru I salute.)
And to see a temporary sports czar who’ll perforce have to beg for votes after five years insult two such Gurus whose names, because of their pupils, will be part of a shining chapter in Indian sporting history… Sad.
And by the way, who are you, Mr Singh? You came from the bureaucracy, earned your stripes at the national polls commission and then turned politician and a minister of a till now infertile ministry. When asked for your credentials as a sportsperson, you told your parliamentary colleagues that you have played gilli danda in the village and also did some boxing. Well, I do not know about the gilli, but the danda is all that you have been known to wield, and also to not pull your erratic punches at sports federations.
In the haze of governmental functioning that remains totally under cover, it is not known whether it is the babus in Shastri Bhavan or the minister who is creating the mess. The ministry has never been a big one, so much so that a past minister could simply throw it away and go back to simple politics and call the ministry’s hoax.
One minister of state for sports who had sporting credentials was Mukul Wasnik, a cricketer from Nagpur. But barring him, most sports ministers have been off-track, if one may pun. Consequently, there was never a political continuity in the ministry: I know of no minister-in-waiting who would go and tell his or her party boss, “Give me sports”! They all just fall into it and remain unhappy till they leave.
This is why the ministry has been always weak kneed, and now it has turned into a double-minded entity. Let me tell you how.
Gill got the ministry to exhume a 1975 guideline regarding the age and tenure limit of federation heads and tried to impose it on the feds. The result: to cut a ridiculous and long story short, it got bumped by the International Olympic Committee on grounds of ‘interference’, which under the Olympic Charter can lead to the de-recognition of the national sporting body, and even of the country itself, like Kuwait had once been.
I have written earlier about that entire episode, so let’s not get into it. The Indian government got a polite dressing down at Lausanne at the IOC HQ, and simply to avenge itself, stopped the Indian Olympic Committee from bidding for the 2018 Asian Games.
I accept now that getting the Asiad again could lead to as big, or bigger, mess than the CWG, but that was not the reason behind the ministry refusing; it was pure vendetta.
Then the ministry went to court and got itself admonished for taking a schizophrenic stand that both the Indian Hockey Federation and the only IOC-recognised hockey body – Hockey India – are recognised by it. The ministry may have excused itself on this banality by being ‘clever’: since the Delhi High Court had earlier revoked the banning of the IHF, it stood recognised; and since the IOC had made it clear that it only recognised HI, that body too was recognised. If you call this tamasha, then the Marathi folk theatre form could feel insulted with some justification!
But why I call the ministry infertile is clear: it has produced not a single talent. Those has has more often than not been ‘self-born’ like Abhinav Bindra, but have also come through the federations. Where does the ministry stand? In nowhere land: HI, yes, because of IOC’s danda, and IHF yes, because of a judicial danda. Bhai wah!
The ministry then told HI to behave and hold its elections under its diktats, forgetting its promise to the IOC at Lausanne. The Delhi and Bombay High Courts later stayed the HI, polls but the Supreme Court, seeing that the Indian women’s hockey team would not be able to play a major international tournament, allowed it. So far so good.
Commonwealth Games mascot Shera: Nothing to smile about.
But the danda had to be wielded at any cost, so Gill’s ministry derecognised HI. To what avail? And what will it say when the HI next selects the national hockey team? Or what if the ministry tells IHF to select the national hockey team and gets jacked again by the IOC again for going against the hockey body in the country that it has recognised? For sure, if the IHF is asked to select a national team for any international outing, the IOC will not accept it, so India will be out of the international circuit in hockey.
Now, to top it all, with the IHF slated to holds its polls, the ministry has now warned it to abide by its diktats. Just to show some muscle, or rather, wield Gill’s favourite sporting equipment: the danda!
The Sports Ministry claims that it has all along been giving all the money to the federations and thus has bought the right to control them. Without a shade of doubt lots have been given but till this year, there had been no systematic planning, no governance, no focus.
Take the much maligned Commonwealth Games: Indian long bore rifle shooters had to practice with and even go to the CWG test event with rifles borrowed from their foreign competitors. As if the latter would, in the best spirit of sportsmanship, hand over their best rifles to our shooters…. So our shooters showcase their skills on class II equipment.
The apparent reason behind this humiliation is that the rifle company that the ministry had placed the order with had shut its factory doors long ago, and the somnolent ministry was not even aware of it.
Then come to cycling. For three years, the cycling federation has been asking for state-of-the-art cycles. It took the Indian government three years to get half the number of cycles needed, and then, it had no money to purchase the accessories. One could argue that accessories can be picked up in India.
But does anyone bother to think about the mental stress of Indian cyclists who has to make do with what is handed out and compete with the next one on the velodrome who has a shining bike and sparkling accessories? Sports are as much about strength and technique as about mental composure, stability and self-confidence. It is like asking a model on a ramp to use her shop-bought dress and compete with the next sexy siren who is donning a JJ Valaya!
Now come to a ‘modern’ angle. The Sports Ministry has five CWG venues in the heart of the city that it has put up for private-public-partnership as part of its much touted ‘legacy plan’. Very modern, very politically correct.
This sense of ownership, however, did not dawn on the ministry when the construction, or reconstruction, of the venues was going on. The Sports Authority of India, which will earn private sector revenue from public money invested in infrastructure, did not bother to send its inspectors to ensure the best workmanship, the best of materials, the best of engineers are used for the works.
There is no record of the ministry telling the contractors that it has inspected the site and such and such a problem needs to be taken care of. False ceilings have crumbled in two major venues: the TT stadium, and the centrepiece of CWG 2010: Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. There have been other problems in other stadia, worst of all in the swimming pool complex, one of the five stadia put up for bidding in the PPP ‘legacy planning’.
But now when things are peeling off, bit by bit, exposing the country and forcing her into a most unwilling and shameful striptease show in front of an international audience, the ministry is wondering why people are making such a hue and cry over these ‘trifling issues’!
We compare ourselves with China and gloat over comments made earlier by Commonwealth Games Federation officials – since retracted and replaced with venom – on us being ‘much better than China’…. Remember Sires, for much less offence, officials have been shot in that country. By State order.
The choice is yours, therefore: to wag a finger at China for its poor human rights record, or to buy national humiliation for Rs 700 billion!
