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SPORTS: UMA BHARTI
Pinch Hitter
Officialdom finds itself on the run as the sports
minister talks accounts and accountability
By Sharda Ugra
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WOMAN AT WORK: Bharati takes the field
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The story goes that when Uma Bharati wanted a
decision taken in a hurry in the Sports Ministry she didn't pick up the
phone. She asked her secretary to list the hierarchy of the minimum number
of bureaucrats required to clear a file (five, it turns out), and then
summoned the gentlemen concerned to her office. She had them discuss the
situation, arrive at a consensus, pass the papers from one to the other
in front of her, sign them and be done with the deed. It is not quite
governance by the rule book and a little confrontationist, but in the
Sports Ministry these days confrontation is the rule.
Bharati, Union minister of sports and youth affairs,
has had her office designed according to the principles of Vaastu, has
books of theology on the shelves and Indian sports officialdom on her
mind. Whether it is the mighty suits of the Board of Control for Cricket
in India (BCCI), the political animals of the Indian Olympic Association
(IOA) or the bloated bureaucracy of the Sports Authority of India (SAI),
they have all gone toe-to-toe with the honourable minister in the recent
past and have the bruises to show for it.
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Uma's New Rule
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National sports federations have to provide
accounts or risk losing their I-T exemptions.
The Sports Authority of India is a target
of scrutiny over its functioning and expenses.
After the Sharjah fracas, the cricket
board is being made to wait for an audience.
Hockey bosses on the defensive over an
India versus Pakistan series planned for Dubai.
Afro-Asian Games officials have been asked
to give estimates of medal tallies.
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It may seem like an incongruous contest: a 42-year-old
woman who barely tops 5 ft dressed in distinctly unathletic saffron robes
versus the Indian sporting establishment, renowned for its long life and
thick skin. But the BCCI is reeling after what boxing judges call a technical
knockout, the IOA has won a couple of rounds against Bharati but is being
made to huff and puff through the rest, and the SAI has retreated to a
neutral corner hoping that she runs out of steam.
This is in keeping with Bharati's image of a
"firebrand" politician, a tag she staunchly rejects in favour
of a kinder, gentler image-that of a concerned didi to athletes, the folk
who drew her close to a field she had no interest in before becoming a
minister. "I used to swim and play badminton but never read the sports
pages of newspapers. When I talked to athletes, I began to understand
more about sports." If her dealings with the BCCI are any proof,
she understands sports administrators far better and her heart does not
bleed for them in the slightest.
The BCCI's famous run-in with the ministry came
over the question of playing Pakistan in Sharjah and its terribly miscalculated
threat not to play in the World Cup and the ICC Mini World Cup unless
it received a clarification from the Government. Singularly unimpressed,
Bharati retorted that the decision not to play was the board's own "headache".
Three weeks after the announcement, BCCI officials, headaches and all,
are pulling every string in the Government to fix a meeting with Bharati's
office-to explain themselves. They haven't succeeded. Bharati's anti-Pakistan
stance is now so well documented that Indian Hockey Federation Secretary
K. Jothi Kumaran did not even mention a proposed Indo-Pak hockey series
in Dubai when he met her recently.
The Government does not covet the BCCI's wealth,
she clarifies. "We are happy that the cricket board is rich, but
it should use the money for cricket. Sport should be sport, not an industry."
Bharati even had a suggestion for the BCCI: take cricket to areas where
there is unrest among the youth who, for lack of diversions, were driven
to drugs and terrorism. She stops short of saying that the match-fixers
should lead this evangelical drive as a sort of community service, but
it wouldn't be out of place if she did.
Bharati switches from plain speech to courtesy
with ease and brushes off talk of confrontation with sports officials.
"The Government knows it cannot do the work of the federations. But
if the federations misuse their autonomy, if they think of it as freedom
to do what they like and if they don't realise what their duties are,
then it is not correct," she says.
"If" is a word that has dominated
Bharati's dealings with officials-except it's not the lofty Kiplingesque
"if". More like an "or else..." Bharati has decided
to use the preparation and conduct of the controversial Afro-Asian Games
as a platform to scrutinise the working and finances of sporting federations.
At a recent meeting of federation officials, secretaries were ticked off
for the absence of their presidents and presidents asked for prospective
medal tallies in their respective sports. The ministry reckoned 18 would
be all-no one dared contradict the figure.
"Federations have to take responsibility
for the results. If you don't get those results after taking help from
the government, then you have to explain," she says. For the first
time, federations (which claim tax exemption and government grants) have
been asked to send details of their expenses. "How much of the money
collected goes to athletic competitions and how much is spent in administrative
costs? Why should our athletes travel in autos while officials travel
in air-conditioned cars? If we find any financial irregularity, we will
not hesitate to derecognise the federations," declares Bharati. The
word "if" again...
After quitting the Lok Sabha last year, Bharati
had said she was "not one for team work". Today, working in
the most tangled team situation, she clarifies, "That doesn't apply
to the ministry but to the working in an organisation. In the ministry
I accept the existence of the secretary." A sports official says,
"I don't think she has ever read a government document and has to
depend on advice. But she is sharp and very direct. If five people are
talking, she can figure out who's right and who's wrong."
Bharati may have lit fires under several chairs
but the establishment does have a fire-station. An official says, "People
like Suresh Kalmadi and Randhir Singh are pros. They have seen 10 governments
and 20 ministers. They are entrenched, immune and are hardly going to
be worried."
In her second term as sports minister, Bharati
says she is "determined" to make "radical" changes.
Her pet projects are putting sports on the priority list in the 10th Five
Year Plan, setting up sports academies in every state and a complete restructuring
of the SAI. Uma Bharati has sent a storm blowing through the Indian sports
officialdom but she will be not judged on that alone. She will be judged
on whether the storm is a mere billowing of dust which irritates the eye
briefly before losing strength or a tempest which will change the country's
sporting landscape.
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