The many promises of Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore

The announcement of Athens Olympics silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore taking over as the Union Sports Minister in September this year had raised hopes of a more proactive ministry that will understand the needs of the sportspersons and start putting certain processes in place.

In the three months since taking over, Rathore has been literally milking his sportsperson credentials and giving sound bites that probably look more authentic coming for an Olympian. But if one really goes deeper to study those announcements and vision statements, they are nothing more than ‘old wine in a new bottle’.

On Sunday, the 47-year-old announced “total funding” to Hockey India in the run up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “From hereon, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games and World Cup are all Olympic preparatory tournaments besides being major competitions. The ministry will give complete funding to Hockey India in terms of whatever they need. 2018 is the year of sports in India,” he was quoted as saying.

Anyone who has followed Indian sports would know that hockey has always received funding from the government for these major tournaments and even other exposure tours for the last five-six years and that would have continued with or without the minister’s grand announcement.

While this statement could just be ignored as a political compulsion to make some announcement when at an event with the next day’s headline in the media in his mind, some of his recent comments will leave you wondering whether it is really a sportsperson speaking.

Take the example of his statement at Madhya Pradesh government’s sports award function, Rathore insisted that India had the potential of producing 100 Usain Bolts and that the government was going use the school sports program to identify talent for the same.

“In India, there is skill-based selections so other countries are able to outrun us, we want to change that. Someone who is 5 feet 11 inches at the age of 12 should be selected for volleyball or basketball teams while somebody with no hand-eye coordination but runs extremely fast should be put in for 100 metre running,” the sports minister said.

As an Olympian himself, Rathore should know that Bolt is an outlier and there has been enough research done on the genes that sprinters need to succeed at the world level and how majority of Indians don’t fall in that bracket. But more than that, it is difficult to understand how a person with little hand-eye co-ordination even run fast because to succeed in sprints, there needs to be far more co-ordination of the whole body and hand-eye co-ordination isn’t exclusive to that.

Then during the Queen’s Baton Relay in New Delhi, where he became the first Sports Minister to actually run in the event, Rathore reiterated that athletes are the focal point of the current government and bureaucracy will have to take a back seat.

“There will be a big change. From now on it’s all about player-centric preparation. Sportsmen are most important. Players, fans and coaches are key and Indian Olympic Association (IOA), federations (NSFs) and sports ministry officials will be below them.

“We need to bring down IOA, federations and sports ministry officials who used to call the shots earlier. Their responsibility will be to give the athletes the necessary help and platforms,” he said.

A few weeks later he tweeted about how there is no place for the word ‘Authority’ in Sports Authority of India and went on to tell journalists about how he plans to reduce the strength of the organisation by 50 percent by 2022.

While this again sounds like a sportsperson speaking from the heart, one should understand that nomenclature and staff strength doesn’t really matter as long as the work for which the organisation is established gets done.

The underlying thread from The Field’s informal conversations with a few government observers, who are also Olympians, has been that SAI and the ministry rarely keeps them in the loop on the decisions being taken and has rarely given them any feedback on the action taken report following their suggestions or observations. And nothing has really changed after Rathore took over.

In terms of policy decisions, the only announcement the 47-year-old had made is about starting Rs 50,000 stipend for all Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) athletes and the revamped Khelo India. To be fair to his predecessor, most of the work on both the schemes was done long before Rathore took over.

It may be a good image building exercise when the minister announces the new Indian hockey team coach through his twitter handle or promises to release fund of Rs 5 lakh for the treatment of former boxer Kaur Singh from the National Welfare Fund for Sportspersons but these are mostly routine procedures and have been done for long.

In case of the coach, while SAI pays the wages, the prerogative of appointing the coach is with Hockey India and ideally they should have announced the new coach. With respect to Kaur Singh’s case, even earlier ministers have stepped in to help former players through the said fund.

What Rathore needs to focus on is to streamline the process since not everyone can reach out to him and make it public since there are many former players who can do with such assistance.

As a former sportsperson, everyone is looking at the minister to actually help create long term talent identification and nurturing system, hire right sports science and coaching experts and ensure that players are not affected by the bureaucratic red tapism that has been the bane of Indian sports for long.

While making the right noise about all this is also part of his job description, even a career politician can do that job. Three months into his new assignment, it might be difficult to accurately judge the true impact he is having behind the scenes but with the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games just round the corner, we definitely need the sportsperson in the minister to take centre-stage ahead of the politician.