BHUBANESWAR 25-Dec-2012 171
Once a state with rich natural resources, Odisha now seems empty, losing its mines, forests, land and water. Modern consumer products and politically hypocritical government schemes have made people of the state easygoing, lazy and prone to disease. Cost of living, rate of crime and corruption have become sky-high. Overall, the state seems to be in a shambles. At this critical juncture, sports can be the right medicine to revive and reenergise the state.
But sport in Odisha is not in a healthy position either. Factors such as lack of public involvement, adequate infrastructure facility, finance and professionalism have been hindering the growth of sports. Sport is not being followed as a way of life and a medium to achieve physical excellence. Instead, sport is used as tool to promote business, politics and get easy publicity.
At present more than 50 sports disciplines are being pursued in the state and the number is increasing every year. But only a few disciplines such as hockey, rowing, weightlifting, women’s football and chess have been able to fetch the desired national and international success. There are many disciplines which exist only in paper and only for the benefit of their office-bearers. The question is: instead of indulging in so many disciplines why not focus on those which have mass following and deliver success?
The biggest drawback of sports in Odisha, however, lies in the lack of competent people both in government and non-government sports organizations for proper management of infrastructure facility, events and careers. In the government set up, you find a new sports secretary or director in every six months or so. In most cases, officers who are placed as secretary or director have no interest in sports and take the job casually. Some of them treat the job as punishment posting and some other consider it pretty ordinary because the budgetary allocation for the department is very low. Because of placement of wrong people at the top two posts, implementation of government schemes for promotion of sports gets neglected.
The situation at the district and grassroots level has become worse because of acute shortage of manpower. Coaches are made to work as clerks in the office instead of grooming talents on the play grounds. Even then, Central Government schemes such as PYKKA fail to benefit sportspersons and the funding remains unspent.
The state government’s own sports promotion schemes have got reduced to just one _ running of sports hostels. Introduced 28 years back, the scheme, however, has become outdated and these days producing only ordinary sportspersons. Sports hostels are being opened to appease politicians, but the hostels fail to serve the purpose without infrastructure facility, coaches and equipments.
Though the state government puts emphasis on development of infrastructure facility, it is not bothering about proper maintenance and optimum utilization of these facilities. The ideal example is the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar. The multi-discipline international-standard stadium could not stage an official national athletic championship despite possessing a synthetic track for the past 17 years. The international-standard swimming pool existing in the stadium is used more entertain rich people rather than promote competitive swimming.
The stadium has four grounds for athletics, football and other outdoor games; three basketball courts, two volleyball courts, 10 tennis courts, one sports hostel, conference hall, gymnasium, dormitories but no indoor hall for games such as badminton, table tennis, boxing, weightlifting and gymnastics. The outdoor grounds also have no scope for cricket.
The main stadium with a seating capacity of over 50,000 could never draw crowd of 10,000 because no major sports event was conducted there. Ironically, the massive stadium these days draws more joggers and walkers than competitive sportspersons. Despite taking users’ fees, the government-owned stadium is unable meet its maintenance cost. The construction work of hockey stadium inside Kalinga Stadium goes on and on and nobody knows when it will be ready for use.
If this not incompetency in management, than what is it? A comparison between Kalinga Stadium and Barabati Stadium in Cuttack makes it clear about what is good management and what is not. Owned by Odisha Olympics Association, Barabati Stadium remains busy round the year staging national and international competitions and coaching camps; generates revenue in crores every year and houses leading state sports associations, a public school and government offices. Especially, the excellent infrastructure facility for cricket has made the stadium well known all over the world.
It is another factory that Barabati Stadium is fast becoming the biggest hotel and club of Odisha as well. Sometimes, it is staging more marriages than matches. The temptation to earn more money has posed a threat to the future of sports there. Of course, earning money by using sports infrastructure is not a bad idea. But the money should be spent for the promotion of sports, not for the benefit of a group of inefficient office-bearers.
It is well-known fact that state bodies of mainstream sports do not want Kalinga Stadium to stage international or major national level matches. And without their supports, the state government cannot do so. If that is the case, why not use Kalinga Stadium to run international standard academies and groom sports talents? If the government lacks competent people for proper management of Kalinga Stadium, it should form a committee, comprising professionals from related fields to do the job.
The cash incentive that the state government was giving to medal winners in different disciplines has been discontinued for several years. Even the annual state sports award, named after Biju Patnaik, has not been conferred for the past two years. Providing employment to sportspersons does not find a place in the agenda of the government.
In case of non-government sports organizations, people managing the show are mostly politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen. Some of them have been occupying key posts in more than one state bodies for ages without justifiable performance. They lack in ability to inspire youngsters take to sports, lack in progressive ideas to chalk out new plans, lack in working acumen for proper implementation of the plans and lack in credibility to rope in sponsors.
Words such as transparency and accountability do not exist in the working manual of office-bearers of most of these sports bodies. In an era of information and technology, most of these office-bearers have no idea about e-mail and website.
These office-bearers are thriving mainly because of the Society Registration Act 1860, which gives them the license to not to be accountable to anybody. It is ridiculous that these office-bearers are working on honorary capacity. Let the government formulate a new act for the governance of sports bodies and let the office-bearers work on a professional basis and be accountable. Then only we will know how good they are.
