An open letter to Narendra Modi about the condition of sports in India

Sarita Devi

Hello Sir,

How are you? Hope you had a good time in the United States of America.

Also congratulations to you on the Clean India campaign. You are right in saying that Indians need to take the responsibility for the cleanliness of the nation.

But sir, there is one thing which needs your attention right now. The reason i am writing this letter to you is because of the ill treatment of Sarita Devi by the IOA officials. Her semi-final bout against Korean Jina Park was judged unfairly and she got relegated to the bronze medal even though she deserved a silver or a gold.

You know what happened next? She wanted to appeal. But the IOA would have none of it. They sneaked away at the smallest sign of trouble. The IOA general secretary wouldn’t get up from his VIP seat and offered the golden words “why was the appeal not filed earlier?”. Poor Sarita Devi had to borrow the money from her coach and an Indian journalist to lodge a protest. All this while, Mongolian officials lodged an appeal immediately when their boxer Tugstsogt Nyambayar was given a similarly unfair decisions.

Sir I ask you, is this the way to treat a 2 times World Boxing Champion? An Arjuna awardee? It is almost as if these honours don’t mean a thing and everything is subject to the whims and fancies of the officials.

And the condition is no different for other sports as well.

Did you hear that Joydeep Karmakar couldn’t compete at the World Championships because he failed to raise the required funds?

Sushil Kumar had to share a mattress with a fellow wrestler and a dormitory with 20 others.

Countless other players have been mistreated by the officials but still they continue playing the game for the ‘Love of the game’. If only such determined individuals could be given right treatment and exposure. Imagine the influx of medals then.

We can be a major sporting nation and the only thing stopping us right now is the corruption in the federations and the ‘chalta hai’ attitude of the officials. These aren’t the 90’s when the parents didn’t want their children to ‘waste’ their time playing some sport and instead prepare to become doctors or engineers. The country is trying hard to look beyond cricket but these kind of instances aren’t helping matters.

In India every guy wants to be a cricketer and why not? They get the money as well as the support. In the recent Jadeja-Anderson gate the BCCI stood behind Jadeja like a wall. If half of that support could have been provided to Sarita Devi, things would have been different.

Isn’t it ironical that in India, a film star making a movie on a player’s struggle makes more money than the sportsperson herself?

The need of the hour is to ‘clean’ sports of politics and corruption. Imagine the number of Asian Games & Olympics medal we have missed out on because of this. Imagine the Saina Nehwals, Sushil Kumars, Sarita Devis sitting at home wondering about missed opportunities due to the lack of platform and support.

We need the ‘achhey din’ for the players as well and only a swift action by you can do that.

Regards,

Indian sports fan