No one knows the owners of the IPL. Are they mafia or businessmen: Ajay Maken

A BCCI president who has to be forced by the Supreme Court to ‘step aside’, a Boxing Association president whose association has been suspended by the international boxing federation for almost two years, two hockey bodies that fight for the right over the sport even as we flounder and fail on the field and the less said about athletics the better. India is no dream land for a sportsman. Far from it, sports in India are a nightmare most choose to avoid. And it isn’t just that India lacks the infrastructure and the talent to succeed. It also lacks the political will to change things. [caption id=“attachment_1457861” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ajay Maken speaks during the Google Hangout.[/caption] In his tenure as the Union Sports Minister (Independent charge) Ajay Maken tried to change things. He gave sportsmen what they needed and India was rewarded with it’s best ever showing at the Olympics (six medals). But then as he tried to introduce the Sports Bill – a proposed law that would have changed the way Indian sports was run, he faced ‘expected’ resistance from within. Now, in the backdrop of the BCCI coming under scrutiny because of the match-fixing and betting scandal that hit the IPL in 2013, Maken – in a Google hangout hosted in association with Network 18, has said that sport persons and not businessmen should be heading sports bodies. When asked how, if he was heading the BCCI, he would clean the mess he said, “No one knows the owners of the IPL, if they are mafias or businessmen. Unless you know these things you cannot clean up sports. I would like sports persons to have more say over the BCCI.” “People who haven’t even held a bat have been sharing financial benefits of the BCCI. If the BCCI is earning so much, the financial benefits should actually be shared with those who have given their entire lives to the game,” Maken said. So the Sports Bill is key but the movement seems to have stagnated. What can be done in the future to get it passed? “I can just say that many of my colleagues in the Cabinet were very supportive. But there were others with vested interests that put a spanner in the works. I can just say they should have excused themselves from the meeting. I very strongly feel that politicians should not enter into sports administration. “Internationally, also I have seen in most developed sporting nations, people directly linked to sports are at the helm of affairs. This is something we should follow in India as well because it is one of the reasons for our poor performance in international level. “The sports bill that I brought about would have given more transparency, would have given sportspersons more say in the management. Sports bodies like BCCI would have come under the RTI  and that would have ruled out scandals like the IPL,” he said. “But the good thing is that it has been on the national agenda and one way or another it will see the light of day. You can’t stop what the people want.” Maken refused to understand how and why Cricket/BCCI should be treated differently from other sports in India. “One cannot compare BCCI with other sports because cricket is just played in five or six countries in the world,” said Maken. “Cricket for us is a religion, but the kind of complaints that are surfacing when it comes to cricket are putting a question mark on the commercial viability of IPL.” “If it is commercially viable it is entertainment and not just sports. If it is sports there are other things also that should be taken care of. They do not adhere to the anti-doping norms, they do not follow RTI when it comes to their financial transactions which all other sports federations follow,” he further added. “So why should one sport special status, just because it has assumed the status of a religion in the country.” Maken said that parents needed to encourage their children to play sports. “We lack sports culture in our country. In our country parents push children only to study. For them success is only to get into IIT. I had suggested that separate marks should be allotted for physical fitness. We need to have a sports culture and it should begin right from the school days,” he said. Maken also pointed out that it was this lack of sports culture that  hindered India from performing better in the Olympics. “We have the capacity to win medals in each Olympic. There is no dearth of resources. But lack of sports culture, transparency and proper training institutes are issues that need to be looked at.” Here is the full video of the Google Hangout: