‘Sports bodies need A thorough overhaul’

The new Union minister for sports and youth affairs Ajay Maken means business. No sooner had he taken charge of the protfolio than he made it known that he was deadly serious about cleaning up the mess left behind by a corruption-ridden Commonwealth Games while being fully focussed on building on the gains that accrued from the event. In this exclusive interview to Syed Khurram Raza, the minister spells out his vision.

How do you find your new role?

It’s very challenging. This the first time that I have independent charge. Now I can enforce my vision. The sports and youth affairs department is crucial. India is a young country. Forty per cent of its population is in the 14 to 35 age group, with the average age being 27. We probably have the largest sports-loving population in the world. Therein lies the challenge: fulfilling the aspirations of such a large number of sports lovers and harnessing the nation’s youth force.

After CWG, we are apparently now a sporting nation. Expectations have increased.Have you drawn any road map?

Even when the reasons were negative, CWG brought sports to the forefront of public discourse. This is a huge opportunity. The infrastructure created for the Games can be tapped by sports persons. We have to convert this euphoria into creating a pool of good athletes. We have to train future champions and ensure that the benefits reach various regions of the country.

India is a cricketing nation. Other sports face neglect. How can this issue be addressed?

You can call India a cricketing nation today. But it was different 30 years ago. We had many other sports. As a student, I used to follow hockey, football and other sports. It was perhaps only after we won the World Cup that cricket took centrestage. Now we are champions in other disciplines too: shooting, wrestling, boxing, archery, badminton, tennis and football. The biggest potential that our country has in any single sport is in football. So I feel it is wrong to say our country is just a cricket-loving nation and that no other sport can thrive here.

Funds play an important role but sponsors are not coming forward to support other sports.

Sponsors will come forward only when they are confident that the money they are spending through sports federations will be spent well and not go into someone’s pocket. I think the challenge lies in reforming the federations. In BCCI, the tenure limit is three years. This isn’t the case in other sports federations. We have to understand why some federations have been able to deliver the goods while others have failed.

How can you end the practice of various federations’office-bearers clinging on to their posts for decades?

We have set up a National Sports Development Board. We need strong legislation. I’ve asked the department to prepare a draft legislation which we will put on our website by February 20 and seek public opinion. What I have said is that the International Olympic Association, in its own charter, talks about tenure and age limits. We should be very particular in this regard. We should adopt good legislative practices from other countries. The US has a law that grants athletes 20 per cent of the voting rights in a sports federation. Why can’t that be done in our country? Sexual harassment and anti-doping laws are also issues that need to be legislated upon. There are age frauds as well. Coaches reduce the age of their wards by four or five years and they let them participate in National Games and National School Games. So we also want to have an in-built age fraud deduction mechanism.

Payments for some foreign vendors of CWG are still pending. What is the position now?

Immediately after taking charge I asked the CWG Organising Committee to scrutinise the bills and release the payments within ten days. Of the 45 foreign vendors, 36 were paid Rs 114.84 crore by January 31. Part payments of the remaining nine vendors have been withheld because of non-performance. Around Rs 191 crore have been paid to these nine vendors and only a sum of Rs 17 crore has been withheld.

You have another important ministry, youth affairs. What is the vision that you have for Indian youth?

It is an important ministry. Unfortunately, schemes for the youth have not been implemented. We have the National Service Scheme (NSS), Nehru Yuvak Kendra Sanghatan (NYKS) and National Youth Corps. NSS has 37 lakh members all across the country. In NYKS we have 1.25 lakh clubs in 501 districts and very soon we are going to have 20,000 volunteers in National Youth Corps. We give them a stipend of Rs 2500 per month for the period of two years. We have deep penetration among the youth but we are unable to utilise them for various youth-related schemes. We have elaborate plans in place to develop sporting ability and other skills among the youth.

Congress fought the last election on the aam aadmi plank but now the common man is badly affected by high prices and corruption. It appears that the government has failed to address the issues of the aam aadmi.

Well, we have good and bad people in all set-ups. The challenge lies in taking strict and immediate action against all forms of corruption. No party can claim it is devoid of corrupt people. No one, whether in politics, bureaucracy, industry, judiciary and even the media, can claim that they are clean. So what is the way forward? The way forward is that as soon as any case of corruption is detected, instant action must be taken.

Bad record of maintenance induces dependence on PPP initiatives

Stadiums... Post CWG?

According to a Delhi based NGO, Hazards Center, the total cost of the Commonwealth Games (CWG) was Rs.55,398 crore; this eclipses even the cost of Beijing Olympics! For records, Delhi hosted the most costly CWG till date, surpassing Melbourne in 2006 whose approximate expenditure was $1.1 billion. There is a lot of apprehension regarding the maintenance of the world class stadiums like Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium and National Stadium post the CWG. The government, after lot of deliberations, has come out with a plan called “legacy planning” where it will involve private partners. According to the plan, the government will retain the ownership of the stadiums; and private players – who will be responsible for maintenance of the stadiums – can use them for sporting events. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) has included five stadiums in this mode.

The total cost of upgrading the stadiums stands at a staggering Rs.4459 crores; these include Indira Gandhi Stadium at Rs.669 crores and Dr. Karni Singh stadium at Rs.149 crores! Remarkably, building an entire new state-of-the-art Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad cost less than one-sixth of the amount spent on renovating the Delhi based Indira Gandhi stadium! The list of expenses also included the facelift that the entire city of Delhi got for CWG. The total cost apparently has been Rs.41,212 crores, meant specifically for a facelift during the games. It include Rs.16,887 crores for Delhi Metro phase 2, new DTC buses worth Rs.1,800 crores, new power plants for the CWG with an accumulated cost of Rs.12,000 crores, and Delhi’s sewage and drainage renovation with an outlay of Rs.4000 crores. However, one wonders whether the same ‘kind’ of fund allocation would continue now that the games are is over – or would the state of infrastructure return to the ill maintained, unkempt form, which is a norm for public sector operations.

Coming back to the stadiums – in spite of the advantages of Private-Public-Partnership (PPP), there are certain issues about the usage of the stadiums if given to private hands! In the past, world class stadiums have often been used for non-sporting events like entertainment concerts, marriage parties, et al. Fortunately, the government has prepared a list of activities that will not be allowed on these grounds/venues so that private programs do not misuse the costly infrastructure.

The importance of PPP is particularly significant in India because of the fact that preserving our infrastructure is not really the strong suit of our governments. For instance, the Government has miserably failed to maintain the stadiums built for Asian Games in 1982 primarily because of poor planning and sheer ignorance of the importance of the issue. SAI is hopeful that private players' participation can be more effective in maintaining the stadiums, while they will get the branding and sponsorship rights on any event that takes place in the stadiums. The track records of PPP initiatives substantiate that PPP has wonderfully refurbished tainted image of many social and infrastructural initiatives. Can something similar be expected in this case too? For that, one would have to wait and see the private parties that get the contracts – well, not every group in this country has as high ethics as the Tatas..

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