Spoilers of Sports

Spoilers of Sports

Last National Games were held in Kerala at different venues. For conducting   the game a new Greenfield stadium was constructed at Karyavattom near Trivandrum with a capacity of 50000 spectators spending Rs 240 crores. The stadium was made in such a way that both cricket and soccer can be played there. After creating lot of infrastructural facilities most of them remain underutilized for a long time and spending huge amount on maintenance.  There was an opportunity to stage an international soccer match in this new stadium. The world cup qualifying match between Guam and India was supposed to play at this stadium. However, the proposal was indirectly scuttled and strangulated by the stadium authorities by demanding an exorbitant rent of Rs 34 lacs for one day. The magnitude of this inflated rent can be gauged from the fact that daily rent of Salt Lake Stadium Kolkata which is having a higher capacity is Rs 8 Lacs only and rent of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Kochi which is having similar capacity is Rs 5 lacs. It appears that the stadium authorities wanted to indirectly deny the facility to host the match.

The stadium was built on the land allotted by the Government of Kerala at a nominal cost. Hence they are duty bound to give the stadium for national sports activities. However, who will enforce discipline on these “Sports lovers” who built such gigantic stadiums for the development of sports in the country is a million dollar question. In this connection I quote from a letter I wrote to the Prime Minister few days ago

“Government spends crores of rupees in the name of sports, repeat in the name of sports, but only negligible percentage reaches the sports persons. No wonder we return from international sports meets with peanuts and become a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.”

Some people and organizations are having such negative mentality that whether they get some benefit or not, they will ensure that others should not be benefited by their action or inaction even inadvertently. This type of negative attitude coupled with crab mentality is largely responsible for retarding the progress of our country in many fields.

Let the God save God’s own country and our own country.