Urgent: Kerala Sports need a saviour

One thing is absolutely certain, and let me reiterate it at the risk of repetition because nobody seems to care. Kerala will likely be pushed down to the bottom of India’s sports map in the near future. The signs are already loud and clear. India’s best sports state until recently, Kerala, is now limping. The most dramatic development is the end of the reign of Malayali women athletes who dominated Indian sports for nearly half a century. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics was the first Olympic Games in four decades that saw an Indian squad with not a single Malayali woman athlete despite the  127-member Indian squad having a record 56 women. The Indian squad for the 2023 World Athletics at Budapest also did not have a single Malayali among its four women. 

(This is not to ignore Kerala’s men athletes, who weren’t a force on the Indian athletic map, making their strong presence lately, led by long jumper M. Shreesankar, sprinters Muhammed Anas, Amoj Jacob and Muhammed Ajmal, long-distance runners Muhammed Afzal and Jinson Johnson.)  

Ironically, Kerala’s regression occurs when India is slowly inching up on the world sports map after a long winter. The recent 19th Asian Games held at Hangzhou, China, saw India making a record haul of 107 medals that included 28 Gold, 38 Silver and 41 Bronze.  However, of the total 58 individual medal winners, only five went to Kerala. Among the eight Gold winners, none were from Kerala. Of the 22 Silvers, Kerala athletes’ share was three, which included the Long Jump medal won by Ancy Sojan, today’s lone Malayali woman star in track and field. 

Why is Kerala, once the God’s Own Sports Country, slipping? Many possible reasons -economic, social, psychological and demographic- were discussed in this column earlier, and I don’t want to harass the reader by repeating them too. But, one reason that should be pointed out again is the increasingly declining support for sports and sportspersons from the state. Kerala’s achievements in sports (as in many other fields) were largely state-driven, beginning with the setting up of GV Raja Sports School as recommended by the Justice VR Krishna Iyer Committee and formed by CPI leader P Ravindran when he was Sports Minister during the 1970s. The state’s initiative was complemented by Kerala society, with hundreds of young boys and girls who took up sports as a passion and also a means to earn a livelihood. 

Today, the spectacle of sportspersons who returned home to Kerala after winning laurels in global arenas, complaining of neglect by the government or pleading for jobs, is as much heart-breaking as shameful to the state.  H.S. Prannoy, who has emerged as one of India’s all-time greats in badminton, and his compatriots have announced to leave Kerala, protesting against the lack of encouragement from the government. Indian Hockey’s best goalkeeper in history, PR Sreejesh, says not even a Panchayat member found it worthwhile to call and congratulate him.   

As happened last year also (which was pointed out in this column), Kerala has been the last to announce cash prizes to the medal winners of the Asian Games. And that too after the media raised a storm and after most other states announced prizes for their medalists. As last year, the prize has also come not just late but too little. It is quite surprising that the government moves only after it loses its face from the bad press it gets for its inordinate delay. But even after Prannoy and others raised their complaints, the cabinet meeting held subsequently simply ignored the matter of delayed cash prizes. Instead, when the media quizzed, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reeled out the details of the amounts and jobs given to sports stars until now. Indeed, the chief minister has to defend his government and give these details when it is accused of negligence. However, how it was presented lacked grace and was seen by many sportspersons as adding insult to injury. 

Moreover, the chief minister’s claim that Kerala never slipped on this count is also baseless, to say the least. As cited in this column, in August 2022, Kerala did not figure among the ten that announced the highest rewards to its medalists in the Commonwealth Games at Birmingham.  Shame, Kerala ....
 

Not just that, Kerala didn’t announce anything even three weeks after the Games, though the games’ single Indian gold winner was from Kerala- Eldose Paul in Triple Jump. Among the three Indian silver medal winners, two were from Kerala- M. Sreeshankar (Long Jump), and Abdulla Abubaker (Triple Jump). Sreejesh added to the Kerala silver kitty when the Indian Hockey team finished runner-up.  

Kerala’s cash prizes look pittance compared to other states. Haryana, India’s best sports state now, has awarded Rs 1.5 crore to each gold winner and Rs 75 lakhs and Rs 50 Lakhs for silver and bronze medalists, respectively. Haryana is followed by Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, and even Uttarakhand, where prizes range from Rs 1 crore to Rs 10 lakh. 

Compare that to the Rs 5 lakh announced by Kerala to the members of India’s badminton team, which won last year’s Thomas Cup for the first time in history.  Even this was announced only after the media lamented that they were not even acknowledged, even two months after they were back after the historic triumph. The Central government’s cash award to the team members was Rs 1 crore each. The only saving grace for the Kerala government was awarding Rs 2 crore to Sreejesh after India won the Hockey bronze at the Tokyo Olympics. 

Chief Minister has repeated the claim that the current and the previous governments have given the highest number of jobs -604- in sports quota during 2016-22. Creditable indeed, if true. How can one forget that Sreeshankar remained India’s only Olympian without a job until he recently joined Reserve Bank after his long wait for a job in Kerala went in vain? Or those pathetic scenes of Kerala sportspersons who won medals in the 2015 National Games demonstrating in front of the state secretariat with their heads shaven, demanding their promised jobs in 2021, or their protest again later, crawling on their knees? Would those athletes forget how Sports Minister  V Abdurahiman refused to meet them even after they waited three hours for an audience?  

Can Kerala hope for another P. Ravindran or Justice Krishna Iyer to salvage Kerala sports?