Sports in politics-Recipe for disaster

By Uditi Sri

Every four years when Olympics are held the Indian contingent returns virtually empty handed with the occasional exception of a Malleswari or Rajyavir Singh Rathore who show their excellence and bring a medal to make the country to go into ecstasy. At the recent Athens Olympics, the nation had to face the shame of our women weightlifters being disqualified having been found positive in the doping tests and worse still the Indian Weightlifting Federation headed by a police officer H D Dora being removed from the International Federation for a year.

The world goes by and our neighbours China are on the way to achieving glory in the sports arena having been selected to stage the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and having taken second spot in the medals tally behind USA in Athens and aiming to take the top spot when they play hosts.

What does India have to show by way of achievements in the field of sports, majority of our sports bodies totalling almost 38 are headed by politicians who use it to feather their political nest and as a stepping-stone in their political career?

Even the recent observations on the functioning of these sport bodies by a Parliamentary Committee appeared to have had little impact on these associations and this was amply borne out in the recent elections for the President of the nation's richest sports body, namely, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) as veteran Maratha politician Sharad Pawar locked horns with the proxy of another old warhorse, Jagmohan Dalmiya who with his final casting vote ensured Pawar lost and his man Ranbir Singh from Haryana got the coveted post.

However, before the election, Dalmiya ensured that he would be made Patron in Chief of the BCCI so that his grip on this body continues and could once again aspire to run for the Presidentship of the International Cricket Conference.

"While recognizing the key contribution of the National Sports Federations (NSFs) in the promotion and development of sports in the country, the Committee is of the opinion that they should also see that their functioning does not leave any cause of complaint. If some of the NSFs were not functioning in a transparent manner and the matter is reported in the newspaper, it does not mean that functioning of all are questionable," observed the Committee which was headed by Vayalar Ravi, yester year's stormy petrel. The last sentence does give away the true story in that the politician would always ensure that his flock remains protected.

Take the Cycling Federation of India and Akali leader and former Minister Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation (IABF) heads it and the Table Tennis Federation of India (TTFI) is with the Chautala brothers - Abhay and Ajay Singh.

The Judo Federation of India has as its President Congress leader and Minister for NRI Affairs, Jagdish Tytler, Rowing Federation is headed by another Congressman K P Singh Deo while the Indian Women's Hockey Association is headed by Vidya Stokes, Congress leader from Himachal Pradesh who at one time aspired to be the state chief minister.

The National Rifle Association has as its President JD-S leader and former Minister Digvijay Singh while the prestigious All India Lawn Tennis Association (AILTA) is headed by former union minister and currently BJP spokesman Yashwant Sinha.

And, of course, not to forget, Suresh Kalmadi, former IAF pilot, who is not only President of Amateur Athletic Federation of India but also of the Indian Olympic Association while BJP leader V K Malhotra is President of Archery Association of India.

Well, if it is not politicians, then it is bureaucrats who head the sports associations like super cop K P S Gill at the head of the Indian Hockey Federation, which appears, destined to be mostly in the hands of policemen having at one time been the monopoly of BSF Chief Ashwini Kumar. This probably because they know how to wield the stick though the art of doing so appears to have suffered since the Indian hockey standards have only gone downhill and our hockey administrators gloat over the past without having much thinking for the future.

Take the Volleyball Federation, it is with B Sivanthi Adityan while the most popular sport in the world, football, where too India did have a rather colourful past has been with Congress leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi who is President of the All India Football Federation and the Indian standards have come to such a pass that a victory over even a tiny island nation like Maldives is celebrated.

What a comedown from the days of 1956 Olympics when India came fourth and had in its ranks players like P K Bannerjee and Thangaraj and the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta when India got the gold medal.

In today's context it may sound more like a joke that India were invited to participate in the World Cup football in Uruguay but were not allowed to do so since our players wanted to play barefoot and this was not permitted by the sports supreme body, namely, FIFA.

The oft repeated saying that Indian team did everything but score can be given yet another twist in the context of the sports bodies of the country and that is Indian politicians know how to grab plum posts in these associations but not how to bring laurels to the country.

The BCCI election in Kolkata did see some rather unsavoury scenes with Pawar and Dalmiya indulging in plenty of backroom games and ultimately Dalmiya having the last laugh when after Pawar and Ranbir Singh were tied, Dalmiya gave the casting vote leading to the defeat of Pawar.

Of course, all this not before there was high drama at the venue of the meeting with initially both Maharashtra representatives walking out giving the impression that they had been debarred from voting. But, they did finally vote.

With politicians heading most sports bodies, what can the poor sportsperson do except to pay obeisance to them and keep on their right side to enable them to participate in major events.

Another example of politicians running the sports organizations was blatantly visible when the Olympic flame passed through the capital.

Guess who carried the flame, except the sportsmen who were to represent India in Athens. It was film stars like Bipasha Basu or Shah Rukh Khan while athletes like the "Payola Express" P T Usha were forgotten.

Said Sports Minister, who is film star turned politician, Sunil Dutt that sometimes in marriages one does forget to invite some near and dear ones and that was probably the case.

One cannot blame him for giving preference to stars for had the Minister had any sports background, he would not have forgotten personalities like Usha.

Taking this into consideration, when India does get an opportunity to stage the Olympics, which it is trying for in 2016, one may see more film stars parading through the opening and closing ceremony while athlete from China and maybe even Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan could be going to the podium to receive medals while our politicians would continue to be busy fighting their battles for heading sports federations. (Syndicate Features)

Handling north-east insurgency

By Vinod Vedi

The explosive recrudescence of terrorism in the north-east has accelerated the pace of Indian diplomatic efforts to get neighbouring Myanmar to do what Bhutan did not long ago to terrorist training camps and sanctuaries on its territory.

Unlike Bhutan which shares a border with India just a few hundred kilometres in width, Myanmar has a border with India which extends for more than 1600 km through dense forests and mountains of the Himalayan range through the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. A flushing out of insurgents of varying hues from Nagas to Tripura Volunteer Force will not be easy across such a large frontage.

India must not repeat the errors it perpetrated during the Bhutan's operations against sanctuaries created by several Indian militant groups like the Assamese, Naga and Bodos on its territory. What should have been a hammar and anvil operation with the Royal Bhutanese Army swinging the hammer against an Indian Army phalanx providing the anvil to smash the militant networks became merely a sweeping out of training camps and militant housing colonies.

The militants themselves managed to evade the Indian Army cordon and melt into Bangladesh and Myanmar and also into the contiguous Indian "seven sisters" even though several hundred were killed or captured.

The series of explosions in Assam and Nagaland in recent days is a reminder that the militants have survived the Bhutan operation and are now set to wreck vengence on India. It need not be cause for excessive alarm but coming as it does so soon after the violence in Manipur over the killing of Manorama Devi by the Assam Rifles and the agitation against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, there is need for abundant caution.

The Indian nation-state has been severely wounded by the agitation to remove from the scene a crucial tool of counter insurgency, in this case the Assam Rifles, from Manipur's main population centres. The agitation against Hindi and things Indian is cause for concern. The bomb-blasts in Assam and Nagaland have added urgency to the need to restore control and calm.

It also does not help if a neighbour like Bangladesh, which shares large borders with Indian States of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, should be so hostile under the leadership of BNP leader Begum Zia. The former "East Wing" of Pakistan is behaving exactly as it did before the creation of Bangladesh by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

At that time Indian insurgent groups like the Nagas and the Mizos were given sanctuaries by the Pakistan Army Inter-Services Intelligence in the Chittagong Hill Tracts for operations against India. China too helped in the activities.

Today Bangladesh is in the thrall of Islamic fundamentalists and there is sufficient evidence, including huge arms hauls inside Bangladesh itself, that terrorism is being fostered by Bangladesh official agencies against India in training camps, which India has identified and sought joint operations against.

Far from being amenable to cooperation with India, Dacca has taken a posture that is intended to overstretch Indian security forces in their counter-insurgency operations. In this it appears to be conspiring with Pakistan to secure redeployment of Indian security forces away from the western sector towards the north-east so as to easy the pressure on the terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir and enable infiltration across the Line of Control.

Since counter-insurgency is a manpower-intensive operation the Government of India must husband its human resources in the region in a manner that it can be utilized to maximum effect and that is to eliminate the terrorists and not just the infrastructure like training camps and living quarters.

As in Manipur, the Centre needs to create a unified headquarters encompassing the whole of the north-east in which the Chief Ministers of all the States of the region, including West Bengal, head their respective grouping of armed forces, paramilitary and armed police entities within a holistic game plan that make for close cooperation in intelligence gathering and coordinated attacks on militant hideouts and concentrations.

How to coordinate with Myanmar

The coordination with Myanmar needs to be preceded by sharing of intelligence and perceptions of realities on the ground so that miscalculations like the one caused by the announcement that the Government is willing to consider the concept of "Greater Nagaland" (during talks between Indian interlocutor Padmanabhaiah and Naga insurgents in Bangkok.) could be avoided.

That created such violent reaction in Manipur where large areas are inhabited by Nagas that both the Centre and the State Governments were hard put to pacify the populace. Before things could fully cool off the Manaroma Devi episode put the fat into the fire again.

In view of this the Centre and State Governments need to be clear about the effect new counter-insurgency operations will have. They need to be selective of areas and pockets of operations so that known militants can either be caught or eliminated in cordon and search operations that must, in the first instance be conducted within Indian territory in ever-widening circles before they are extended up to the international borders.

Or, conversely, joint operations can begin with Myanmar armed forces along selected portions of the border before expanding inwards into each other's territory so that an element of hot pursuit is introduced and the insurgents are herded into pre-selected "killing zones".

It will be necessary to expand the numbers of security forces dramatically so that the chances of the insurgents escaping through the dragnet is reduced though it may not always be possible to plug all loopholes in the kind of terrain in that part of the country.

Just as the militants are trying to mount psychological pressure on the nation-state and its security apparatus it is necessary that psychological operations be made an essential part of the counter-insurgency operations so that hearts and minds of the people are not swayed in favour of the militants.

The US has offered to send Federal Bureau of Investigation agents to help look for the terrorists in Indian territory. This should be resisted and, instead, diplomacy should be used to get the US to bring pressure on Bangladesh to cease and desist from allowing its territory to be used by Islamic fundamentalists and Indian insurgent groups.

The US already has strategic agreements with Bangladesh to allow US security forces to enter the country for disaster relief operations. This arrangement should be utilized to inject the FBI into Bangladesh, which, like Pakistan, is fast becoming a rear eschelon for the Al Qaeda and indigenous Islamic fundamentalist groups.

With US agencies operating from Bangladesh the effect could be salutary throughout the region. US presence need not be more than several hundred strong but the kind of equipment they are using in Pakistan to detect terrorist hideouts would, indirectly, help Indian and Myanmar security forces in their search for terrorists on their side of the borders.

The US needs to be told that trying to expand its strategic reach in the region under cover of Indian misfortune in the north-east will neither serve India's national interests nor contribute significantly to the global war on terror if the jehadis are allowed to use Bangladesh territory to regroup and to stir up trouble in contiguous areas.

The presence of the FBI in Bangladesh will produce better dividends because it is well known that the Al Qaeda has shifted base during the US offensive in Afghanistan and Pakistan and, increasingly, the Islamists are trying to regroup in Bangladesh. No better illustration of this is in the fact that Russia has traced six Chechen terrorists who had received training in Pakistan and had set up modules to attack Russia into Bangladesh.

There is no gainsaying the fact that it is in Pakistan itself that the US will make significant progress in mopping up the Al Qaeda and Taliban hierarchy in the towns and cities where they appear to be enjoying the patronage of official institutions like the ISI and the police. However, it cannot overlook the fact that there is an attempt to disperse and that Bangladesh is fast becoming a sanctuary as well. (Syndicate Features)