The Bitter Truth
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: October 10, 2012 -
Ajay Maken Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports Ajay Maken at Olympic Bhawan, Khuman Lampak Sports Complex :: Pix - Hueiyen Lanpao
On a two-day visit, Union Minister of Sports Ajay Maken came, interacted with sportspersons and officials and left with lots of promises to develop sports infrastructure in the state.
The Mary Kom Boxing Academy is to be lifted to the International standard, a world class football academy is to be set up with hostel facilities for both boys and girls, multi-purpose sports complexes are to come up in all the districts and the State is to get a Lion’s share of the fund provided for the whole country for the development of sports, and blah, blah...
As a matter of fact, these are the facilities that our talented sportsmen and women should have been entitled to long time back.
With Indian sports riding high on its most successful Olympic Games of six medal haul in the recent London Olympic, 2012, the Union Sports Minister is aiming for more Olympic glory in the next 2020 Olympic Games at Rio.
He has been very candid in admitting that India’s dream of keeping alive the sports momentum and winning at least 15 gold medals in the next Olympic Games would not be possible without the talented Manipuri players who, he said, is going to get half of the targeted medals.
While we appreciate the fact that Government of India has at last acknowledged Manipur as the reigning sports powerhouse in the country which could not be written off easily, an unfortunate incident of alleged racial discrimination and denial of chance to a Manipuri player from participation at the World Junior Diving Championship scheduled to take place at Adelaide, Australia from October 8 to 13 has surfaced.
Ironically, the matter has come to light while the Union Sports Minister was here to boost the morale of the sportspersons.
15-year old Kongbrailatpam Ramananda Sharma, a young and promising player, who has not only broken national records twice in national junior spring board diving but was also selected along with three other divers to represent India in the 19th FINA World Junior Diving championships has been deprived of the chance to participate in the championship due to alleged negligence and discriminatory attitude of the National team coach Mayur Vyas.
Parents of Ramananda have alleged that in addition to Rs 2 lakhs for travel and stay, Mayur Vyas had taken Rs 13,000 for processing visa in September last only to be told Ramananda just minutes before taking off for Australia that his visa was not cleared.
What is even more galling here is that in order to ensure participation of Ramananda in the world championship, the local people have even conducted a fund drive as his poor parents could not afford the amount asked by the team coach.
More than lack of any necessary infrastructure, it is such discriminatory attitude that demoralizes most Manipuri players.
The Union Minister of Sports should take serious note of this and have the guts to swallow the bitter truth, if he wants to see more and more Manipuri players bringing medals for the country to achieve his target.
* Comments posted by users in this discussion thread and other parts of this site are opinions of the individuals posting them (whose user ID is displayed alongside) and not the views of e-pao.net. We strongly recommend that users exercise responsibility, sensitivity and caution over language while writing your opinions which will be seen and read by other users. Please read a complete Guideline on using comments on this website.