In solidarity with the athletes! Not the nation! Not the Media

When the International Olympic federation suspends the membership of the Indian Olympic Association, it causes a lot of botheration and pain and the least of which is the inability to play under the tricolour. More importantly the issues at hand which are being missed out by the mainstream media is the considerable decline that will be witnessed in the amount of exposure the athletes have been getting.

Let it be absolutely clear that players and athletes have seldom received significant help from the puppet organisation mostly run by the ruling party at the centre. In fact reality would suggest pretty much the other way round where athletes of great mettle have vented their anger at the associations ignorant and insult full attitude towards them. Certain pivotal examples in this regard would be P.T.Usha, Dhanraj Pillai and many more. One thing common in the solution that these greats had proposed was to keep politics and more importantly partisan politicians away from sports who rarely come with any sporting genius. And today when the inevitable happens the beauracrats, the sports minister and even the heads in the association feign in an air of complete disbelief. While the International Association clearly hints that such a drastic step have been mandated only after repeated failure to reciprocate to the warnings issued by the international body to rectify their electoral process, the Indian Netas and Babus sweat it out to blame the international body itself and goes on with the same procedure of election which saw the rise of Kalmadi who is today infamous for amassing crores of money.

The major hurdle is yet to come. While the mainstream media is busy to cover the embarrassment of the tricolour very few seems concerned about the athlete. Yes! The athlete who sweats it out for 12-14 hours a day in training even after the government fails to provide for the basic nourishment needs of the citizenry in hope that someday he/she can make it to the big stage suddenly wakes up today only to realise that his ticket to the big stage has become all the more difficult only because the babus found their asses too comfortable in the chair. Not only will they have no national coverage but also less funds out of which the cuts in the process of reaching them still remains statutory like the warning on the cigarette pack.

So today the atheletes of India not only lack an identity in the big stage but also the funds that can help him reach there. And Olympics which is supposed to be an event of sports and athletes suddenly becomes a matter of nationality while the misery of the athlete goes unnoticed and unreported only because his misery does not sell as much as the national embarrassment.