Sport's sorry 'state' of affairs

Bengaluru: A hundred and seventeen athletes that made the cut for the Paris Olympics returned home with six medals. The last fortnight or so has seen the country rejoice the few podium finishes and lament the near-misses while reserving scorn for those who again failed to live up to the expectations.

Never before has there been such a widespread conversation, whatever maybe the opinion, surrounding the biggest sporting event in the world and India’s performance in it. It is, therefore, safe to say that ‘other sports’ have piqued the interest of a country with a 1.45 billion population. 

At such a time when the sporting ecosystem in the country is going through an upward trajectory, Karnataka’s approach towards sports appears to be stuck in a time warp though. 

Out of the 117 competitors, nine athletes - Rohan Bopanna (tennis), Ashwini Ponnappa (badminton), Aditi Ashok (golf), Archana Kamath (table tennis), MR Povamma and Mijo Chako (both athletics), Nishant Dev (boxing), Srihari Nataraj and Dhinidhi Desinghu (both swimming) - from the state flew to the French capital for the 33rd Summer Games. 

The point of apathy is less to do with the number of Karnataka athletes in the Indian squad and more to do with what the state government has done in their development?  

All these nine athletes attained the tag of Olympians, similar to a majority of their predecessors from the state, despite the system. Whatever they have achieved is on their own -- family, private and corporate sponsorships. The system being referred to here is the government that has been criminally indifferent towards the development of a sporting culture in Karnataka which has a rich sporting history.  

It all begins with the age-old practice of announcing spur-of-the-moment impractical schemes, budget proclamations that live and die on paper, job offers that take years to come by and the crumbling, inadequate infrastructure built and maintained by municipal corporations. 

To mention a recent example, during the three-year Paris Olympics’ cycle (the period between the end of Tokyo Games - August 2021 - and the beginning of Paris Games - July 2024), the then chief minister Basavaraj Bommai of the BJP government announced the ‘Amrita Kreeda Datthu Yojane’ (Amrita Sports Adoption Programme) in 2022 with a promise of Rs 10 lakh per annum funding along with providing training facilities and exposure trips to help the chosen 75 Karnataka athletes under the scheme to prepare for Paris. 

If the first list of 75 athletes included names of injured players who had quit sports, a retired international player, athletes of a sport (basketball) that never even had an outside chance of making it to the Paris Olympics among other such inclusions, the revised list - which for some reason is being guarded from public scrutiny - reportedly has athletes who are yet to receive the full sum of Rs 30 lakh they were promised through the scheme. 

The first list was assured to be revised by the then sports minister Narayana Gowda after DH published a report, questioning the credentials of some of the names in the list in 2022. 

“No, nothing. Except for the first year’s installment of Rs 10 lakh, we didn’t receive the remaining amount,” a coach of one of the beneficiaries told DHoS on condition of anonymity. 

“The DYES (Department of Youth Empowerment and Sports) officers refuse to show the revised list they speak about. The new government (Congress under the leadership of Siddaramaiah) that was formed in 2023 said they will continue with the scheme. But nothing has happened till now, and the Paris Olympics is already over,” the coach rued. 

Speaking of the current government, four-time MLA B Nagendra was given the dual responsibility of heading the Sports ministry along with the Tribal Welfare ministry a year ago when the Congress party came to power. The 52-year-old Nagendra from Ballari had to resign from the Siddaramaiah-led government following his alleged involvement in a money laundering case in the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation Limited this July.

Traditionally, the Sports Ministry in the Karnataka cabinet has had few takers. With Nagendra quitting, the department was left with no leader at the helm during an Olympic year. In such situations, the chief minister (Siddaramaiah in this case) takes over the vacant spot until a new name is announced. So far, it has been kept vacant. 

Why is there such an indifference towards the Sports Ministry? 

“Because this is a portfolio which nobody likes or wants,” says Pramod Madhwaraj, now a BJP member who was the minister for Youth Empowerment and Sport between 2016 and 2018 during Siddaramaiah’s first tenure as the chief minister. 

“Ministers, irrespective of the party, don’t take any interest in developing sports as their interest lies elsewhere. Unless and until you devote yourself and are committed, it’s impossible to show results in the sports department. You need a minister who loves sports and someone who is not corrupt,” offers Madhwaraj. 

“Even the officers (appointed in the DYES) have their own agendas. They will be jumping from one department to another trying for a better post than this. How can anything improve,” he questions. 

The almost nonexistent work is apparent given the shoddy conditions most of the 29 district stadiums and 152 taluka stadiums are in. The unpaid/ underpaid DYES coaches, substandard quality of food and equipment provided to rural athletes only add to the woes.

Karnataka, it must be noted, received Rs 100 crore under the Khelo India project for the year 2023-2024. This was more than Haryana (Rs 88.89 cr) and Punjab (Rs 93.71 cr) that contributed four of the five individual medals (Neeraj Chopra - athletics, Manu Bhaker and Sarabjot Singh - shooting and Aman Sehrawat - wrestling) in Paris while these two northern states together sent a whopping 11 of the 16 bronze medal-winning hockey team members. 

Most of modern state-of-the-art sporting facilities in Karnataka are run by private sectors or former sportspersons mostly located in and around Bengaluru. Unless an athlete attains a certain benchmark, these international standard facilities are out of reach for him/her. If grassroot development - a favourite throwaway line in every debate about improving sports in India- is the need of the hour, then sincere effort should be made to implement a robust, scientific and well-researched government programme in every district.   

Until then, knee jerk reactions like financial support of Rs 5 lakh for athletes just days before Olympics, handing job letters after years of wait, conducting events without a well-planned calendar will help little in improving sporting standards.