Whether you're a nine or 90-year old desi with an insatiable appetite for sleaze and slime, you need not go further than a section of our shrill sports media for your daily gupshup 'fix'
Whether you're a nine or 90-year old desi with an insatiable appetite for sleaze and slime, you need not go further than a section of our shrill sports media for your daily gupshup 'fix'.
Bored with the inconsequential, nudge-nudge-wink-wink minutiae of an ill-advised Indo-Pak marriage, Indian sports lovers, characteristically breathless in daily pursuit of salacious betting, match-fixing and sexual escapades, have now moved way past Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Franck Ribery.
Thankfully, the frenetic daily media coverage of cloak-and-dagger Indian Premier League (IPL) shenanigans, which took precedence over life and death considerations of security, roti, kapda and makaan has, at long last, been slashed to realistic proportions.
Fortunately, the unending mouth-watering cocktail of dark and devious financial IPL deeds, the avaricious wheeling-dealing, the spurious 'I-ain't-done-nothing' outrage -- all spiced, shaken, stirred and topped up with the inevitable femme fatale -- has been watered down.
Instead, prime time and space in the media have been usurped by the mouthwatering falooda of the jhagda between union minister of sport MS Gill and his friend-turned bete noir Suresh Kalmadi, the high-profile head honcho of the omnipotent Indian Olympic Association (IOA).
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| Union minister for sports and youth affairs MS Gill (left) and Indian Olympic Association chief Suresh Kalmadi |
Gill, in his evangelical zeal to find a panacea for India's unending sporting woes arising out of the fact that her 1 billion-plus souls have produced but a solitary individual Olympics gold medallist in 76 years, has issued a fatwa that will restrict the tenure of the top brass of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) and national sports federations in accordance with its 35-year old guidelines.
While lamenting the sorry state of Indian sport, Gill quotes chapter and verse from international sports bodies to validate Government's long-overdue efforts to cut the vice-like hold of career sports politicians (and politicians in sport), an objective this writer has pursued for over 40 years.
In a desperate effort at self-preservation, office-bearers of the IOA and the NSFs (some have held office for over 30 years) have yelled 'blue murder', branded government's initiative 'undemocratic' and have joined ranks to fight theu00a0 proposed move, which they term "draconian."
It's difficult to find fault with the incensed, self-righteous rationale of IOA boss Kalmadi that the timing of government's proposed move, just five months before the New Delhi Commonwealth Games, is extremely ill-advised.
One must also concede the cogency of Kalmadi's argument that what's sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, namely that if government is serious about applying the 70-year age limit to IOA and NSF office-bearers, the same yardstick should also apply to Gill.
Be that as it may, the moot point is: If not the old, entrenched monopolistic, non-performing dispensation, who should be custodians of the orphan that, barring its rich relative -- cricket, Indian sport continues to be?
Certainly not politicians, generally discredited in the eyes of our janta, who have reduced our sport to dire straits in the first place.
And, with due respect, not our former champions either, as is often suggested in uninformed but well-meaning quarters. Experience in our country and abroad is replete with instances of well-meaning ex sportsman being woefully out of their depth in matters of administration and management.
Who then? I wish I had a pat answer except that those entrusted with the daunting responsibility should be selfless individuals of unimpeachable integrity, who are not necessarily former champions.
Indian sport desperately needs selfless helmsmen and administrators for whom position and power are of no consequence.
Is that akin to looking for the Yeti (or Abominable Snowman) or the Loch Ness monster?
I think not. The search must begin and end with committed young Indians who have played and understand the essence of sport, who have expertise and experience of management, who have a burning passion and whose heart bleeds for India and Indian sport.
