Indian Sports Shame!
by elangbam singh on Aug 11, 2008 07:55 AM
The sorry episode in which a woman athlete from Manipur, weightlifter Laishram Monika Devi ended up victimised by petty and seemingly entrenched politics in the top governing bodies of sports in India, in particular the Sports Authority of India, SAI (sigh!), and the Indian Olympics Association, IOA, is a loud testimony why a nation of over a billion has been unable to win even a single individual Olympics gold in the entire history of the Olympics. This, almost total lack of Olympics achievement becomes painfully stark when considered against the fact that a country like Surinam, which is merely a tiny spec in the middle of the ocean, and probably a majority of the world population would be unable to detect without assistance even on a wall size map, have achieved the feat. Impoverished countries like Ethiopia and Jamaica have been doing very much the same, and consistently too. Yet few or nobody in India seems bothered enough. The country remains content that it plays cricket well, a game played by a motley dozen countries, we suppose somewhat like Malaysia boasting it can play sepak takraw better than any other country. We hope we are wrong, but it is quite probable that India will return empty handed yet again from Beijing. Another thing is equally predictable. Even in the event of another disastrous performance, no institutional heads of the sporting establishment would roll, and like modern feudal lords, they would continue to hold their corrupt non-performing sway over
