A Game Of Farce
Milkha Singh's refusal to accept the Arjuna Award has sparked off a heated debate over the country's highest sporting honour. This year's controversial list is being seen as the straw that broke the camel's back. Leading sports people believe the award has been devalued and compromised by political lobbying.

A Leader Reformed
A.K. Antony, a one-time Nehruvian socialist, is winning the support of industry as well as Central funds in his new avatar as the harbinger of reforms in the economically beleaguered state.

Family Bride
Poor sex ratio has forced the Gurjjars of Rajasthan to share their wives.

COVER STORY: ARJUNA AWARD

Prize And Prejudice

Milkha Singh's refusal to accept the Arjuna Award for a lifetime's contribution to athletics has finally blown the cover off the country's highest sports honour. Political lobbying and corruption have reduced the award to a complete farce.

If you want to know how the nation bestows its highest sporting award, there's a simple way. Step out of your home and head for the nearest market selling fish. It will have all the ingredients of an Arjuna Award panel meeting: spilt blood, gutted fish, loud voices, the striking of bargains and a very distinctive odour. Till now, Indian sport had chosen to hold its nose and pretend the market was a rose garden, choosing to see the presidential ceremony rather than the not so grand process behind the award. Until Milkha Singh said, no thanks. Now the feisty 70-year-old who talks of himself in the third person will not accept his Arjuna Award for "lifetime contribution" (see interview) and his refusal has sent sports officialdom scattering.

It is Milkha's stature that has put the Arjuna Awards on the night news but the honour list for 2000 is not an aberration. It is merely the end result of the slow erosion of scrutiny and standards in the awards committee, and the final victory of political recommendation over sporting result. When the names for the year 2000 were announced Milkha found himself on the same platform as a sacked hockey coach, a gymnast with no international competition on her CV, an official with only a half-marathon victory to her credit. It was not only the final nail on the coffin but rather the final handful of mud on the grave. It has taken 40 years but the barbarians have finally broken through the gates. Or, to use an idiom more suitable for Indian sport, the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

GO FORTH AND APPLY

Union Sports Minister Uma Bharati would not agree. She staunchly maintains that all awards raise a furore-whether it is the Arjunas, the Padmas or the Oscars (see interview). Is Milkha then merely the leading nominee for the most bitter actor award in Indian sport's annual rant? Not by a long shot. Unlike the others, sports awards should be fairly cut and dry: those who win major titles and break important records qualify. Losers, quite simply, should lose out.

So, surely, Milkha must be mistaken. Surely, he can count. This must be the golden age of Indian sport-if you go by the number of Arjuna Awards handed out, that is. In the past five years (1996-2000), 122 awards, both regular and lifetime, have been announced. This is more than 20 per cent of the total number of Arjunas, 575, handed out since their inception in 1961. But between 1996 and 2000, Indian sporting achievers at world level have come in a paltry trickle and would go into double figures only if you counted each man in the 1998 Asian Games gold medal-winning hockey squad. The generous quantities in which the awards are handed out-like ladoos, says Milkha-do not reflect the health of Indian sport. More like its biggest ailment: the lowering of standards, on the field and in officialdom. "The decline in the criteria for the Arjuna Award has been due to the decline in our performance at the international level," says J.S. Saini, veteran athletics coach. It is pure chicken and egg-had the standards for the award not been lowered, the Arjuna would still have counted for something. "There is no consistency in the way the awards are handed out and no transparency in selection. In two or three years, they won't mean anything," says former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira.

The selection procedure is the key to the rot. All applications have to be made to the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs and are then run through a Sports Authority of India (SAI) scrutiny list before being shortlisted and finalised. Previously, only national federations could send applications. In the mid-1980s when job promotions in government offices began to be linked to the Arjuna Award and cash prizes were also handed over, the decay set in. An Indian Olympic Association (IOA) insider says, "It was common for federations to ask athletes for money to recommend their names for the Arjuna Award. Sometimes, girls were even asked to sleep with officials for a recommendation."

Officials of the Arjuna Awardees Association (AAA) say that the practice of asking for a commission in exchange for an Arjuna recommendation was found not only in traditional sports but in the handicapped sport category too. "Athletes come to me and say, 'Sir, officials bahut tang karte hain' (The officials trouble us a lot)." The athletes who were seen as being undisciplined or troublesome could keep winning but remained unrecommended. "It is not an award anymore, it has become a reward for services rendered outside the sports arena," says badminton international Leroy D'Sa whose application has been turned down repeatedly. To prevent federations from holding athletes to ransom, the awards were thrown open to individuals. Pandora had nothing on the box that this change opened up. Now an application can be backed by anyone-the athlete's state sports council, his local MP, a powerful politician from the region, an industrialist. The more power these backers wield, the better the chances of the athlete landing the award, sporting achievement be damned.

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