Friday, May 7, 2010

'Boxing' between Sports councils and ministry - Will the nation gain anything?

Do you know what was our position in the last Olympics? Like our population that too was big number. It will be very easy to see the name if you start searching from the bottom. Except cricket, chess, billiards, the old golden days of Hockey, boxing, some occasional happenings in Tennis etc, we will be unable to locate the word ‘India’ in any other sports charts in international level.

Can you remember at least three current players of Indian hockey(where we were the number one for dacades), which is also supposed to be our 'national game'? In every Olympics somehow we are getting one or two medals and escape from the fear (or shame) of not having the name on the list. Look at the pathetic condition - 1.2 billion+ country is getting one or two medals. Who are responsible for this? As usual here too the answer will starts with politicians; the one and only one entity which we can blame for everything that went wrong in this country (Anyway we are not ready to accept our guilty)!!! Irony of the fact is that in all most all cases it is correct. Politicians, red tape beaurocracy and the people who are selecting them are mainly responsible for all the problems (Infact we are part of the problem not of solution). If there are some Olympic medals for giving promises, then our politicians will surely get all of them.

Who is supposed to run the hospital? Of course some doctor and management will be controlled by people who have some management background. Who is commanding army? Who is running the business firms? You may be wondering what type of questions I am asking, let me ask one more question - who is supposed to run the sports bodies?
I don’t know your answer, but my answer is some retired or serving sports personals, even interested people in other fields including politicians can do the job. But thanks to our politicians retired sports persons are usually not forced to do this 'hard job'. Our politicians will allow them to take rest and ready to sacrifice their time to run these sports councils in both state and national level. Cricket was an exception but after the bitter fight with ‘Jagmohan Dalmiya’ finally they entered in cricket too - how can they resist the glamorous and money rich cricket(now-a-days they are receiving causalities in this field, one minister already lost his job, the sword is hanging in the head of other two).
The latest news is that government is trying to clean up the sector. Sports minister and former IAS officer MS Gill bring back the 1975 regulation which limits the number of terms one can serve in sports council to two terms. (But what happened to this legislation after 1975? why it was put in cold storage? Anyway this will show the way for a lot of godfathers of Indian sports. Now what to see is - will these people allow the minister to go ahead? They may feel sports councils as their home, after serving for such a long time (more than one decade).
It will not cut the ice if ministry is doing some cosmetic changes like just putting another one in charge. They should take some firm decisions to improve the sports sector in India. Some of the adaptable steps are,
1. Identify and train the talented and interested one's from the young age.
2. Don’t concentrate excessively on city; Childs from the tribal belts of India will have a natural ability for excellence in sports.
3. Instead of pouring gifts only when some one got recognition in international level, support them from the beginning itself.
4. Include retired sports personal in the governing bodies of sports councils.
5. Exploit the ability of technology to produce more efficient results (Please don’t use drugs. If no medals, its fine).
6. Select sports personals for international events on the basis of merit only.
7. Increase the price money for school level sports.
8. Create a commission for studying and creating a well defined framework in sports.(If government don’t like to implement the report, then please don’t create the commission at all - at least we will not loss the money).

These are some of the good steps to start with. But to reach the high levels we have to do more.

We don’t have any need to spend these much money for commonwealth games - when hundreds of farmers are suicide in Maharashtra and other states, when the nutrition levels of small Childs born in ‘MadyaPradesh’ and other states are considered among the lowest in the world - if India's name is not appearing the first places. As Indians we don’t have any problem with anyone who is serving more than one or two term. Politicians can put themselves in fair elections and serve as many times as they want. But we want results, we don’t want India's name to appear in the bottom of every sports charts. We don’t want to be satisfied with one or two medals in Olympics, we don’t want our sports personals moving out of their professions due to lack of support and indifference.

Ministry should not concentrate only on pushing out current heads and posting new one. If sports minister can deliver the results then let him do it. Clean sports sector, if can't produce results shut down the ministry, disband all the governing bodies in sports and hand over the councils to sports personals.
Sajeev

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