Why is India so poor in sport?

by T.V.R. Shenoy

READERS who have been following this column over any period of time know my theory that the fortunes of India’s ruling party and that of its cricket team mirror each other. Indira Gandhi’s victories, electoral and otherwise, in 1971 matched those on the cricket field in England and the West Indies.

Common traits of new Ministers

by Harihar Swarup

THREE Cabinet Ministers inducted by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in his Cabinet in a mid-session expansion come from diverse background yet they have many common traits. Jaswant Singh, Jagmohan and the much younger Pramod Mahajan, besides having charming personalities and suave manners, are known to be doers.

75 Years Ago
No change of heart

WHILE we are prepared to give full credit to the Bombay Government for its eagerness to settle the Bardoli dispute, a perusal of the terms actually proposed by the Governor at his interview with the deputationists makes one wonder why he should have been at pains either to go all the way to Simla to consult the Viceroy or on his return journey to have a busy day with the representatives of the peasants at Surat.

Why is India so poor in sport?

by T.V.R. Shenoy

READERS who have been following this column over any period of time know my theory that the fortunes of India’s ruling party and that of its cricket team mirror each other. Indira Gandhi’s victories, electoral and otherwise, in 1971 matched those on the cricket field in England and the West Indies. More recently, Pokhran-II followed hard on the heels of explosions of another sort in the Coca-Cola Cup. (Will we ever forget Tendulkar’s pyrotechnics on that magical night of April 24 in Sharjah?)

Unfortunately, that theory cuts both ways. The BJP’s lacklustre performance in the Assembly polls was faithfully echoed by the Indian XI as it played its inaugural first-class match in New Zealand, losing to the Central Districts by a seven-wicket margin. Even more unfortunately, the connection isn’t confined to cricket alone, judging by the Asian Games.

The continent’s premier sporting festival is halfway through its calendar as I write, but India’s name is yet to figure on the gold-medal list. That is a pretty shameful record for the second-largest nation on this planet. Predictably, China heads the medal tally as befits the most populous nation, but surely India should be somewhere on that list.

It can be argued that I haven’t taken into account the fact that there are still several events to be played out. The tennis team, to name but one, has guaranteed that India will get at least a bronze. But is that good enough?

Tennis is a sport of supreme individualists. India’s success in this event is largely, almost entirely, the work of a single man, Mahesh Bhupathi. He, let it be recorded, owes very little to the Indian Tennis Federation leave alone the Indian Olympic Association. What, if anything, have those worthies achieved?

Football is the most popular game played on earth, a close second to cricket even in India. Yet do India’s footballers have anything to boast about? How about the volleyball team? The track-and-field squad? The archers and the shooters? The gymnasts and the swimmers?

Save a lone face-saving silver by the weightlifters and the aforementioned tennis team, India has drawn a blank as I write. And the saddest part of the whole story is that this performance was really quite predictable.

India’s best show at the Asian Games was, believe it or not, in the first event, held in Delhi quite a way back in 1952. India was then next only to Japan in the medals tally, with Iran coming third. It has been downhill ever since for over four decades.

The most interesting thing about that first medals table is the absence of China from the top trio. The difference is that the People’s Republic sweated it out in the athletics arena as it did in other fields. It was only to be expected that Japan couldn’t maintain its position at the top given its smaller population (relative to China that is). But that brings me back to India again: why is a nation of one billion people seemingly unable to produce athletes who can compete with the best?

Take the track-and-field stars. It took over 30 years for an Indian to break a sprint record set by Milkha Singh back in the early ’60s. On the distaff side. P.T. Usha’s first appearance in the national headlines was in the Asian Games of 1982. Sixteen years is an eternity in international sports: why then is the country still so dependent on her ageing limbs to set the pace?

Many people say that Indians are so enamoured of cricket that no other sport receives the kind of attention it deserves. (Surely not true of soccer.) Others say that the various official federations are inefficient. (So is the Cricket Board.) So what is the reason? And, more important, what can be done to rectify the situation?

Common traits of new Ministers

by Harihar Swarup

THREE Cabinet Ministers inducted by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in his Cabinet in a mid-session expansion come from diverse background yet they have many common traits. Jaswant Singh, Jagmohan and the much younger Pramod Mahajan, besides having charming personalities and suave manners, are known to be doers. They are the persons who can deliver the goods; men who can be relied upon. More importantly, the Prime Minister has confidence in them and in his own word: “I wanted someone to share my burden”. Had the RSS allowed the Prime Minister a free hand, Jaswant Singh would have been the Finance Minister in March itself.

Jaswant Singh and Jagmohan have no RSS background and, possibly, that is the reason why they are somewhat sidelined in the BJP hierarchy. Mahajan has reasonably long association with the RSS but, it appears, lately he fell from grace. His defeat in the 1998 elections was a setback and kept him away from ministerial office. So was the fate of Jaswant Singh. The Prime Minister did make use of the capabilities of the two leaders hailing from Maharashtra and Rajasthan; Jaswant handled delicate diplomatic assignments and Mahajan looked after the PMO as Political Adviser. Both have now been elected to the Rajya Sabha, legitimatising their claim for ministerial berths.

Jagmohan, representing New Delhi, missed the bus when the Vajpayee coalition was constituted. Evidently, the M.P. from South Delhi, Sushma Swaraj, got preference over him; she had, apparently, more clout with the Sangh Parivar. Doer, as he is, Jagmohan is expected to bring much desired toning up of the Communication Ministry. In the age of communication revolution, the Ministry has assumed vital importance; it is no longer “Dak-Tar Mohakma (department)”.

Jaswant Singh has come to be known as the trouble shooter of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. The Prime Minister uses his persuasive skills in various fields; sends him to Chennai to mollify an estranged Jayalalitha and within months despatches him to Washington to negotiate with Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State.

Veteran Marxist parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee had once described Jaswant Singh as “the articulate prince charming” who, he added sarcastically, “won the heart of Jayalalitha although he could not win the heart of the people of Chittorgarh (constituency from where he lost)”. The burly Rajput leader has something magnetic about his personality.

Jaswant was unofficially functioning as External Affairs Minister for the past eight months carrying on sensitive negotiations with world powers explaining India’s very difficult position on Pokhran-II and countering Pakistan’s rising clout on the Kashmir dispute. He should now be able to assert more as he occupies the Minister’s chair in South Block.

Like many senior BJP leaders, Jaswant Singh, does not have RSS orientation. He was an Army man and discipline has been inculcated in his every action. He says his wife, more out of disgust than admiration, often says: “Fauz chode varshon beet gaye, adat nahin chhuti” (You have left the Army years ago but your habits have not changed).

Having been educated at Ajmer’s Mayo College, Jaswant Singh underwent rigorous military training at Joint Services Wing, Clement Town, Dehra Dun, NDA, Khadakvasla, and Indian Military College. “The Army training has left an indelible mark on my personality, shaped me in a particular mould”, he says.

The External Affairs Minister has taken to politics on his own volition. His political “guru” has been the former Rajasthan Chief Minister, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, who persuaded him to join the BJP. Once he jumped into the hurly-burly of politics, there was no looking back for him. He has now realised that the ground rules of battle in politics are different from the real battlefield.

Jaswant Singh was elected to the Rajya Sabha for the first time in 1980 and was given a second term in 1986. He made a debut in the Lok Sabha in 1989 and was elected in the 1991 and 1996 elections from Chittorgarh constituency. He was unlucky in 1998, having lost to his Congress rival by a narrow margin when the BJP was all set to lead the coalition at the Centre.

Jagmohan is, perhaps, a most organised and meticulous person, a writer and a thinker. He does not waste a single minute on non-productive gossip in the Central Hall of Parliament. He will rush to the Indian International Centre the moment he is free from his parliamentary obligations and devotes his time at the IIC’s library, going through the voluminous books and, as someone remarked, producing articles by the kilos.

Jagmohan’s talents came to the fore during his term as the Chief Executive of Delhi Development Authority and the dash in him was recognised by the late Sanjay Gandhi and the later Indira Gandhi who pitchforked him to the position of Delhi’s Lt Governor. Jagmohan became Delhi’s youngest LG and set up a record, having held the sensitive post for two terms. He, on his part, proved his mettle, having successfully organised the Asiad Games, CHOGM and the non-aligned conference.

Jagmohan bounced on the national scene as the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. During his first term he established himself as a popular ruler and the people of the trouble-torn state admired him. The militancy was then latently but menacingly growing. Jagmohan could sense it but the rulers in Delhi remained oblivious to the magnitude of the threat.

In January, 1990, when V.P. Singh was the Prime Minister Jagmohan was drafted for the second term almost in an emergency situation. The then External Affairs Minister, I.K. Gujral, gave a midnight call to Jagmohan and by next morning he was on board a BSF aircraft flying him to Srinagar. His second term got bogged down in controversy but many of the points made by him later came true. His book — My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir — is, perhaps, the most authentic work on the ethos, culture and problems of India’s northern most state.

He will always be remembered in J & K for formulating and carrying out the historic reform of Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine. Thousands of pilgrims going to the shrine first thank Jagmohan as they begin the arduous climb, made more easy by him. Jagmohan joined the BJP much later and he is among few front-rank leaders in the party who had never a close link with the RSS. He has, in fact, been recognised as one of the top most civil servants of the post-Independence era.

As the new Information and Broadcasting Minister, Pramod Mahajan will have more proximity with the PMO than he enjoyed as Political Adviser to the Prime Minister. The BJP leaders have been complaining that the media has turned hostile to the government and the party and one of the tasks of Pramod Mahajan will be media management. He was doing the job quietly as Political Adviser but he has now acquired more legitimacy.

Mahajan may not resume his daily briefings but he has already started interacting with the media with a view to refurbishing the Vajpayee Government’s image. It’s a delicate task as the image has already touched a new low.

Mahajan is said to be the brightest among the young BJP leaders; sharp, intelligent, pragmatic and eloquent, having good command over English, Hindi and Marathi. He made a mark both in the Rajya Sabha and during his short term in the Lok Sabha as a powerful speaker. He was elected to the Lok Sabha in the 1996 elections with a thumping majority from Mumbai North-East but his defeat from the same constituency in the snap poll shocked and surprised the BJP leadership.

The youthful leader has emerged as the key trouble shooter of the BJP before the midterm poll and the credit of brokering pre-poll alliances with Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu and Biju Janata Dal in Orissa goes to him. The two tie-ups, in fact, changed the fortune of the BJP, enabling the party to have a foothold in the two southern states where their presence was minimal. Mahajan is also said to be the mastermind behind the splits in the BSP and the Congress in U.P. enabling Kalyan Singh to form his Government. The oft repeated joke in political circles then was “jehan joda-tode hai, wohan Pramod Mahajan hai” (wherever there is politics of manipulation, Pramod Mahajan is there). He has also come to be known as a resourceful fund raiser for his party because of his proximity with big industrial houses of Mumbai.

Mahajan is a staunch RSS activist, having association with the organisation since his childhood. Both his father and grandfather were school teachers in Mehboobnagar town of erstwhile Nizam’s state. He did his M.Sc in physics, moved to Pune, obtained a diploma in journalism and joined a local newspaper. The untimely death of his father at the age of 48 put the entire burden of the family on him and he had to take the job of a school teacher in the early seventies to support his family members.

75 YEARS AGO

No change of heart

WHILE we are prepared to give full credit to the Bombay Government for its eagerness to settle the Bardoli dispute, a perusal of the terms actually proposed by the Governor at his interview with the deputationists makes one wonder why he should have been at pains either to go all the way to Simla to consult the Viceroy or on his return journey to have a busy day with the representatives of the peasants at Surat.

Those terms, to say the least, show no change of heart on the part of the Government; and there is nothing in them which the Government of Bombay might not have offered to the peasants at the very commencement of the struggle and without any reference to the wishes or views of any superior authority. In the press communique announcing the Simla visit it was stated that.

His Excellency felt that, while as the head of the administration it was his obvious duty to uphold the supremacy of law, it was no less his duty, as representative of His Majesty the King-Emperor, to do what he possibly could to prevent the development of a situation which must ultimately inflict great hardship and suffering on many persons.