Chandigarh, September 3
\nIn Rajyawardhan Singh Rathore, we\u2019ve got the first sportsperson-minister to head the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. Over the last 26 years, we\u2019ve had politicians, ex-bureaucrats and an actor (Sunil Dutt) as Sports Minister. In terms of field of expertise, Rathore is the best-qualified Sports Minister India has ever had.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that world-class sportspersons have not entered Parliament in the past \u2014 we\u2019ve had Aslam Sher Khan, Karni Singh, Chetan Chauhan, Kirti Azad, Navjot Singh Sidhu and Mohammad Azharuddin as MPs. None of them, however, made it to the Sports Ministry.<\/p>\n
Colonel Rathore, the first Indian shooter to win a medal at the Olympics (in double trap, Athens 2004), took voluntary retirement from Indian Army in 2013 and joined the BJP, and was elected as an MP from Jaipur Rural the next year. He was the best-qualified MP to head the Sports Ministry in 2014, though the job went to Sarbananda Sonowal before Jitendra Singh took over as a stop-gap arrangement for less than two months last year. In July 2016, Vijay Goel was named the Sports Minister.<\/p>\n
Poor record
\nThe record of the two previous long-term Sports Ministers, Sonowal and Goel, is not great. Sonowal could not clean up the national sports federations, and the Sports Bill continued to remain in a state of limbo. Officials in various sports continued to run their associations like personal fiefdoms.<\/p>\n
Goel today said that he was successful in his 14 months as Sports Minister, but this is a debatable claim. The problems he inherited were not solved. Then, the Sports Ministry had been hopeful of winning 10-plus medals at the Rio Olympic Games, but India won only two. Goel himself landed in a controversy when the Olympics organisers threatened to cancel his accreditation over Goel \u201ctrying to enter accredited areas at venues with unaccredited individuals\u201d. As India\u2019s performance in three recent World Championships (badminton, wrestling, boxing) shows, the country\u2019s sportspersons are running on their own steam. Bureaucratic hurdles have negated the good government funding and support could have done.<\/p>\n
Rathore\u2019s job
\nDeep domain knowledge doesn\u2019t necessarily lead to excellence \u2014 one doesn\u2019t need to be a great doctor to run the Health Ministry, for instance. But domain knowledge does help, too. Rathore indeed has an advantage over the sports ministers of the past \u2014 he knows exactly what is needed to be done in order to become an elite international sportsperson. A very fine golfer too, Rathore knows the challenges that confront Indian sportspersons. He himself benefitted from the Army\u2019s excellent infrastructure and job security in his pursuit of shooting, but he would be aware of the difficulties faced by an average Indian sportsperson. Today he talked about removing hurdles faced by India\u2019s sportspersons.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s create systems that take away all hurdles from the sportsmen other than his adversary,\u201d Rathore said. \u201cLet’s create a new India that is fit, mentally and physically strong and is able to win medals for this country.\u201d He used the words \u201csportsmen\u201d and \u201chis\u201d, though we can be certain that it\u2019s just due to habit, and that he would include women sportspersons in his plans.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s sports community has welcomed Rathore\u2019s appointment. \u201cAn inspirational Olympic medal winner as our new Sports Minister. Good times ahead for Indian sport,\u201d said former Indian hockey captain Viren Rasquinha.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chandigarh, September 3 In Rajyawardhan Singh Rathore, we\u2019ve got the first sportsperson-minister to head the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. Over the last 26 years, we\u2019ve had politicians, ex-bureaucrats and an actor (Sunil Dutt) as Sports Minister. In terms of field of expertise, Rathore is the best-qualified Sports Minister India has ever had. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3746,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3744\/revisions\/3746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}