Sports czars: A report card

When speaker Somnath Chatterjee asked for a debate on Saurav Ganguly's recent unceremonious ouster, wasn't he aware that the root cause of the malaise that has infected Indian sports was sprawled right before him on the benches?

By Norris Pritam
If you are a sport fan in India, it is time for you to be for or against Saurav Ganguly. Why only a sports fan? Even people who had nothing to do with sports have expressed their valued ‘opinions’ on the matter. Former India captain Mansoor Ali Khan, or Tiger Pataudi, as the world knows him, very nicely summed up the situation in a TV show the other day.

"Twenty-five years ago, youngsters used to meet me in parties and ask about cricket. Today, they tell me," said the dashing batsman. This is the biggest change that has taken place in India, apart from, of course, loose baggy ‘gentleman's’ whites to a trendy designer-made blue outfit.

The change in the game, once played to pass time on a leisurely Sunday, has now reached the lawmakers, too. For want of anything better to do, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee offered to take up the Ganguly issue for debate in the august Lok Sabha. It is a different matter that the Speaker later changed the debate to the ‘state of sport in the country’. Come to think of it, it is worse than discussing Ganguly's ouster from the Indian team for the Ahmedabad Test. At least in Ganguly's case, there was an element of discussion and the country was divided. But, today, does anyone have the least doubt about who has brought Indian sport to its current state of debilitation?
Almost all national federations are headed by ministers and Members of Parliament (MPs), who have been ruling for decades: Prof Vijay Kumar Malhotra, for instance, has been the president of the Archery Association of India for over three decades; another MP and chairperson of the Minorities Commission, Tarlochan Singh, is the vice-president of the federation; Kalraj Mishra, as another vice-president, is also pulling the archery strings.

Suresh Kalmadi has been president of the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) since 1987. As a multiple player of political games, he is also president of the Asian Athletics Association and the Indian Olympic Association (IOA). All national sport federations and state Olympic associations are in the iron grip of the IOA (read, Suresh Kalmadi). Who, then, is responsible if Indian sport is ailing? Do we have to discover the answer to this through a discussion in Parliament?

Water resources and information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has been president of the All-India Football Federation since time immemorial; Jagdish Tytler
has been heading the Judo federation; former finance minister Yashwant Sinha is president of the All India Tennis Association, while Digvijay Singh heads the shooting federation.

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar has recently taken over as president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. While he can escape immediate censure by declaring that because he has just become incumbent, he will take some time to clean up the cricket cesspool, what about other MPs who have been lording it over Indian sport for years? To repeat: How would a discussion in Parliament help Indian sport when the root cause of the malaise is present right there in the House?
Government observers and delegations accompany Indian contingents to all the Olympic and Asian Games at the expense of the taxpayers. The Speaker should first ask for the reports submitted by these observers before taking up a ‘discussion’. It would be interesting to know why, during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, the government delegation, headed by the then sports minister, dropped in to the hockey stadium for precisely 15 minutes before trooping out to the airport. Perhaps, better things were waiting for the delegation in sun-and-sea-soaked California.
Similarly, former sports minister Shahnawaz Hussain made tall claims of cleansing Indian sport while watching the India-Pakistan hockey match at Sydney. Not that his words counted for much — he was deprived of the sport portfolio even before he returned to New Delhi: He received the news of his ouster in transit in Singapore. It might be illuminating were the Speaker to ask for Hussain's report on the Sydney Olympic Games.

It is nothing short of amazing that Somnath Chatterjee wasted no time in taking up the Ganguly matter when issues such as lack of education, poor health, and sanitation never get such priority in the House. Something is out of kilter in both the Indian world of sports and the august personages who have made them their fiefdoms. It would be better for the Speaker to ask the sports minister to begin an inquiry against the corrupt bodies like the Sports Authority of India, and then make the report public.