What are your plans to increase accountability and remove long serving office bearers from National Sports Federations (NSFs)?
There are good leaders and there are bad leaders. Some leaders are running sports bodies as their personal fiefdoms. They may belong to any political party. But now the days of holding on to positions for ages are gone. There’s a lot of pressure from the public and the media. Now, only the performers will stay in federations. We are seeking more accountability now. We regularly seek reports from federations to check if they are conducting tournaments. The report of National Sports Code Review Committee is expected soon.
What is your take on politicians holding positions of authority in NSFs?
We won’t bring a law against leaders of NSFs. I don’t want to get into individuals, but some influential people are required in NSFs because they have to take care of national and international events, sponsorship deals, etc. The presence of big names does help. However, most federations are in the process of changing their leadership.
A lot of NSFs are embroiled in power tussle. How do you plan to reach a permanent solution?
We have established friendly relationship with federations. We have rectified judo, karate and badminton associations, among others. All these federations were laid low by infighting; we brought them to the negotiation table and resolved their issues. I personally chair such meetings and decisions are taken on merit, that’s why you don’t hear much noise outside. We have made it clear that if they don’t go by rules, we will disqualify them. In the case of the Indian Olympic Association, it took us barely an hour to reach a decision.
India sent its largest ever contingent to Olympics last year, but we managed just two medals. What’s the way forward?
People say we are a country of 125 billion, but we got just two medals. It’s not about the population; you have to see if we have a sports culture. People come and tell me not to focus on all sports but pick a couple of sports and develop like Jamaica, that sweeps athletics but does little in other sports. But that approach ensures there’s no wholesome development of sports. Sending a contingent of 119 athletes to Olympics is also a medal. Sending 20 athletes at Paralympics is also a small medal. We have divided sports into A, B, C, and D categories. ‘A’ category will have games from which there are maximum chances of a medal, and so on. We will identify 10 universities and make them sports hubs. We used to get a lot of players from universities, but that supply has stopped. We are targeting 27,000 government schools for Mission XI Million project, which is a student outreach programme for football. We have also reconstituted the Target Olympic Podium (TOP) committee. It will now identify and train promising athletes. Also, the Olympic task force will give its report in three months. Such processes, however, need time. We need to fix accountability on players as well. Earlier, players used to decide where they wish to train. Now, we (ministry) will decide where they will train. We have enough resources. There’s no resource crunch in the path of an Olympic medal. We need to prepare 200 athletes for Olympics. Even last year, the government spent a lot on the Olympic athletes. There’s not a single complaint from a player on this.
There’s a perception that things don’t move in the ministry. How do you plan to counter that?
I meet people every day at 10 AM. I have told sports persons as well as coaches to approach me directly, and no one can claim that they went to see the minister but didn’t get any response. We are trying to resolve issues swiftly. We have resolved issues between 4-5 federations. Even boxing is getting back on track now. Such developments take time; we have to dismantle old systems to install new ones. It’s not easy, but we are at it.
How do you plan to sensitise people towards taking up sports seriously?
We need to develop a culture of sports. Government can’t do everything. Sports is a state subject, but we have reached a consensus to get it in the Concurrent List. Once that happens, the funding will increase. I have met Arjuna awardees, Dronacharya awardees and sports ministers of various states for their suggestions. I have met PSUs to increase CSR funding for sports. In order to inculcate a culture of sports, we must ensure the HRD Ministry makes sports a compulsory subject and allocate a compulsory period for it. We are in discussion with HRD for this.
In order to build a sports culture, we need to have public playgrounds and parks, but that space is rapidly shrinking. How do you plan to address that?
We have plans to protect all play fields in the country. If I had my way, I’d advise people to occupy every vacant piece of land and convert it into a play field. We are looking to take 5lakhfrom MNREGA in villages and use it to develop play fields in their villages. The problem lies in implementation. We lack professional people to carry out these plans. There are various other initiatives we are working on, but we don’t have the right people. All these stadia that we have, they are all white elephants. I want to ensure 100 per cent use of these, and I have met people from Ernst & Young and Price water house Coopers for suggestions.
Please elaborate.
I plan to install screens in all stadia so that people can walk in anytime and watch matches. I am looking to create an app to bring all stadia of MCD, DDA, NDMC, Central government, and the Railways under one umbrella. I wish to create a pool of all these stadia and become their patron. By using this app, people can come to know where they can play which sport, what slots are vacant, how they can get memberships etc. We have met all stakeholders in this regard and have asked for their stock, which we have got. The development of this app is underway. We are also preparing a proposal to conduct a national marathon day. The idea is to include every city, village, district and club of the country in this programme and identify a day where the entire nation could run. We can include one of PM’s messages as the central theme for the marathon. We are in touch with various events management companies to discuss the logistics.
