Nipping sporting talent in the bud

Rohit Mahajan and Sabi Hussain

Boxer Sarita Devi’s tears are a testimony to this fact. When Sarita was declared the loser in a bout she’d clearly won in the Incheon Asian Games, Indian Deputy Chef-de-Mission, Kuldeep Vats, was present in the stadium. Did he rise to the occasion and comfort and counsel Sarita? No, he simply vanished. He was on a junket, and he didn’t wish to deal with unpleasantness.
That’s what Indian sports officialdom does — when there’s a crisis, when the welfare of a sportsperson is in danger, officials become invisible.
If you meet Rajiv Mishra on a train journey, please don’t embarrass him by asking how his life went off the tracks. At 17, the young genius was the star of India’s hockey team when it won the bronze at the 1997 junior World Cup. Now he’s a ticket collector in the Railways. The officials of the Indian Hockey Federation (IHF) let him down. One day, in Patiala, he suffered a routine injury to his left knee. It required surgery. He sought help from the IHF — he was told to get the operation done, and that the money would be reimbursed. That’s it — that was the extent of mentorship he got. In 1998, he tried to return to the game a bit early and worsened the injury. At 21, he was finished.
 Santhi Soundarajan, daughter of daily-wagers in Tamil Nadu, won a silver medal in the 800m run at the 2006 Doha Asian Games. She then failed a gender test. The methodology of gender testing, and indeed its results, are controversial and disputed. But we in India don’t do sensitivity, and she was simply cast away as a criminal. Santhi found work in a brick kiln, earning Rs 200 a day.
These are just random pickings from a sad harvest of stories of Indian sportspersons, and these indicate exactly why India is not a sporting power.
 Sport is inherently rewarding, the joy of sport lies in its practice. Sportspersons convey the notion that a nation is physically tough and fit and hardy. That’s the reason governments invest heavily in sports.
Indian sports associations, though, often become not a facilitator but a hindrance.
India, with over a billion people, the 10th-largest economy in the world with a $1.877 trillion GDP, is a mysterious dud. Kazakhstan, Jamaica, Azerbaijan, Uganda and Grenada — hardly wealthy or privileged — finished with more medals than us at the 2012 London Olympics.
But the calculus of Indian sport is complex. To be the best in India, an athlete’s skill must extend beyond the athletic ability.
The initial hurdle is the absence, and shrinkage, of space for children to play, and the lack of training facilities and expert coaching. But it’s only the beginning of the ordeal — pursuit of serious sport leads to a tryst with the sporting establishment and the world of political brinkmanship, intrigue and compromise.
The poor and the underprivileged create most of India’s sportspersons — rich kids become engineers or MBAs. The poverty-stricken athletes take to sport to keep their home fires burning. These — exploited, deprived of diet money, lodged in poor facilities during competition — then become the nation’s sporting warriors.
 “Indian athletes fight everyday with their own self, federations and even the Sports Authority of India (SAI) to realise their dream of winning a medal for the country,” says Sunita Godara, 1992 Asian Marathon champion. “You know the story of Santhi Soundarajan? Or sprinter Dutee Chand, who was disgraced, reviled and abandoned by all after failing a gender test?”
It’s not only easy to blame the system. It’s imperative. The national sports federations are made up of politicians and bureaucrats, who get into sports not because they love sports, but because of the prestige and the honour, and the junkets in events like the Olympics. They won’t give up power unless forced to, even after, say, 34 years in office, as in the case of Archery Association of India president Vijay Kumar Malhotra.
“These officials take the credit when we succeed!” says a leading archer. “But they only select the players and send their entries. Whatever we are today is because of our own blood, sweat and tears, and not because of the federation.”
It’s a difficult struggle. Right from the start, an athlete deals with favouritism in selection, shortage of food supplements, unavailability of equipment, poor medical facilities, meagre daily allowances, absence of qualified coaches, harassment by officials… We could go on, for the list is really endless.
“During the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, then AFI secretary general Lalit Bhanot did not give us our $20 daily allowance,” Godara adds. “They can stoop that low. We all know Abhinav Bindra got little help and trained on his own.”
Bindra, secure and articulate, doesn’t hesitate to speak the truth. In his autobiography, he dedicated a chapter to the administrators, titled Mr Indian Official: Thanks for Nothing. “In India, we must swim through chaos on the way to a medal,” he wrote.
Most athletes we spoke to wished to remain anonymous. But not brave badminton player Jwala Gutta. “I had so many tiffs with my federation officials that I can now write a book on it!” Jwala, who was threatened with a life ban last year, said. “I have played badminton with all my heart and soul, and these officials do not respect my achievements. They never think about the interest of a player. I missed out on the Beijing Olympics because I wasn’t allowed to play in international tournaments till August that year by the officials.”
Jwala also brings up a problem faced by Indian women sportspersons — sexual harassment and male chauvinist office-bearers. Sexual harassment at the national camps is major problem, and most women athletes have a story about it. In hockey, there was the MK Kaushik-Ranjitha Devi controversy, and junior weightlifters had accused the chief coach of harassment. Recently, a 20-year-old gymnast filed a police complaint against her coach and a gymnast for making “lewd gestures”.

Ruchika Girhotra, the Chandigarh girl who committed suicide after being molested and harassed by IPS officer SPS Rathore, was a tennis player. She happened to meet Rathore only because he was the president of the Haryana Lawn Tennis Association. This was an extreme case, but sexual harassment is common in Indian sport. “I know sexual harassment happens everywhere and a majority of cases are covered up,” Jwala said.

Aware of all the problems of sportspersons, former athlete Ashwini Nachappa, now president of Clean Sports India (CSI), says the officials in their current role are dispensable. “Sportspersons achieve excellence despite the federations,” she said. “The infrastructure and funding are provided by the government, so what do the federations do?”

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), despite its many failings, is, ironically, a well-run organisation with good facilities and well-run tournaments even for juniors, though there are shocking stories of favouritism and suppression of talent at the junior and Ranji Trophy-level.

Hockey India is in a state of shambles. “It is run as a one-man show by its president,” says a player. “We compare ourselves to the US and European countries, but we are nowhere near them in terms of technology and coaching system,” he adds. “We need high-end equipment. The coaches are not familiar with up-to-date strategies and techniques. There is a need to professionalise sport by restricting its administration.”

Godara agrees. “The system of honorary officialdom is clearly outdated,” she said. “The politicians and bureaucrats should make way for sportspersons and management experts. Qualified former athletes should become part of the administration.”

If India must find sporting excellence, it will have to be done by making the pool of talent bigger. That is possible if the middle classes join in, too, and not steer their kids towards a “safe” career option. This, in turn, is possible if sporting establishment is rid of the predatory politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen.

Money is a problem
Government sports officials believe that the sum allocated to sports in the Union Budget is hardly adequate for a country of India’s size and population. “The national sports budget totalled Rs 250 crore for 2014-15, of which the SAI received Rs 160 crore,” a senior SAI official said. “This included funds for the maintenance of existing infrastructure, salaries of coaches, upcoming projects and grants to federations. Now, I think this is not really enough. And when we don’t get enough from the Centre, it’s the responsibility of the national sports federations (NSFs) to spend the funds judiciously. Also, the NSFs have not made public their account details on the website as ordered by the Sports Ministry.”