Suresh Kalmadi, the infamous politician and the man who shamed India during the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010, lost the election to the post of the president of the Asian Athletics Association to Qatar’s Al Hamad. Ironically, Kalmadi, who has been the IAA president since 2000, lost in his hometown of Pune.
Strange as it may seem, for a country that takes pride in its people holding such top positions in world bodies, most right thinking Indians actually rejoiced at Kalmadi’s loss. Most heaved a sigh of relief that at least the international community’s threshold for suffering the corrupt has been breached. What a pity! And what a shame too!
But should we stop at being happy that the patron saint of corruption in sporting bodies has been shown the door? A number of questions remain, the most pertinent being: After the disastrous experience of the CWG 2010, what with the huge corruption scandals marking almost everything associated with it, and the embarrassments that the nation suffered repeatedly over these exposes, how does he still get to be our nation’s nominee for such posts?
Remember, this man spent time in Delhi’s Tihar jail for some of the relatively smaller cases that he was involved with in the run-up to the CWG. It is a different matter that while in jail, he was looked after like a VIP, spending considerable time with the jail authorities in their airconditioned offices while being fed snacks and tea. Of course, there was another set of stories too that he was told: Go to jail, you’d be looked after well, just remain quiet and don’t name the ‘bigger’ guys involved in the CWG muck. Some of those names were pretty common on the social media then, and are even now, but lack of any concrete proof would keep me from naming them here.
But still, this man spent time in jail for corruption in organising a sporting event. How can he be even considered for a top post of an international sporting body as my country’s nominee beats me?
Of course, once again there would be arguments that the government has little say in the matter and that when the government interferes, the international bodies object and even point to the fact that India was suspended by the International Olympics Committee in December 2012 for such an ‘offence’.
But that fails to take into account that almost every sporting body is controlled by a politician, either directly or by proxy, and they run them like their personal fief and actually are happy when such strong action is taken by the international bodies, for it means a ‘scared’ government then makes a show of pulling back out of concern for our poor athletes. It is a charade that has gone on for ever and shows no signs of relenting. Read the post I wrote in December 2012 about this. IOA suspension: A dream come true for Indian politicians
So much has been written about the way sports in this country is mismanaged that it seems unlikely if anything concrete will ever emerge from our criticism. It is almost like water over duck’s back. But one would still want to repeatedly ask a few questions. How did Kalmadi spending time in jail as a VIP help Indian sport’s cause? Where is the money that he is supposed to have swindled? What about those who were involved in infrastructure construction whose quality is pathetic but still cost several times what it should have? What about the huge scandal involving overlay items in the games village? And so on.
As I said, precious little happened when the entire media went relentlessly after the crooks involved in the commonwealth games. In the meanwhile, you can read two interesting posts written in 2010 about the scandals then and you’d realise the futility of it all.
I declare the games shut. Let the audit begin (October 2010)
Commonwealth Games: Scary daredevilry of the corrupt (August 2010)
