An inevitbale implosion
The Commonwealth games is fast approaching and it looks like sports persons in India are taking this as a wonderful opportunity to bargain for their dues. Most of the sporting bodies are thoroughly mismanaged to an extent that some of the don’t even pay the players.
Recently, men’s hockey team stalled their national camp and told the office bearers of Hockey India to pay them up so that they would continue their camp. It raked up quite a furor in the media, with eyes moist and all, lot of news readers lamented about the plight of our national sport and the pathetic state the sport is in.
Then came the riff between the Abhinav Bindra, the ace shooter and the Shooting association. He even threatened to withdraw from world championship and sorts.
Suresh Kalmadi seems to be the power broker in all the cases. He stepped in to solve the men’s Hockey fiasco. The irony is that Kalmadi himself is the ultimate personification of what stinks in our sports and athletics. He is actively involving all these stop-gap measures so as to make sure that, there is no embarrassment, while his flag ship project – Commonwealth games unfold in India.
Wont it be great to see our hockey team taking to the ground in CW games 2010 wearing black arm bands because they are not paid their dues?
Yes, that is what the ladies hockey team have decided to do. They have started practicing in the national camp wearing black arm bands protesting against the non-payment of their dues.
Skipper Surinder Kaur and her team mates says that many of their team members have financial woes and they are not being helped adequately.
It is terribly sad to hear this. It almost amounts to begging.
Then again, this is the best occasion to earn your best bargain from the nonchalant sporting bodies. World championships and CW games are on the anvil and these kind of drastic measures can only provide a rude jolt for the sports administrators in our nation.
This kind of implosion was waiting to happen in our sports.
I would say, it took some time for our sports persons to assert themselves to garner a better deal, but i am happy it is happening now.
Stop-gap measures and patchy manoeuvrings cannot fix this. It is sad that our authorities are not still realizing this.
Time and again our sports persons will revolt and it will be common theme in our sports in the coming years, if we don’t plan out a strategy to develop and give the right dues to our sports persons.
Anyway the omnipotence of sporting associations have been quashed by a recent Delhi high court ruling. It is a breather for well wishers of sports in our country.
This is seriously some great news. So far our sports associations got away saying that they are “Independent, autonomous” bodies that need not divulge any information pertaining to their work under the RTI act.
If this rule is extrapolated, all our sporting bodies will come under the purview of RTI act and that could bring about serious changes in the way these organisations function. Most of these bodies have been personal fiefdoms of different politicians who used to head these organization for decades and more.
While the implosion was something that was bound to happen, the new court ruling provides sports aficionados of this nation something to cheer about. (here “sports” doesn’t take into account cricket!)
RTI is the most powerful act ever passed by Indian lawmakers. Good to know that it could bring some relief to the sports lovers and get the sports organizations to knees.
these organization should be liable to the nation in some way or the other. hope the new ruling of court can help this cause.
[...] The commonwealth farce is over. Everyone seems to be enthused about the fact that the games went on well after all those initial glitches and media reports. We seemed to have bettered our medals tally and people are already talking about hosting Olympics. I still stand by whatever i wrote earlier about CWG. Check those here and here. [...]