If the sordid experience of the athletes one day prior to the Games is not enough, the end proved even more disastrous with not enough medals to go around. Call it bad planning and execution with inexperienced people at the helm or simply a case of not doing enough homework but the damage is done. In the first instance, the fact that a pressure group was allowed to dictate terms about who should be the members of the Meghalaya State Olympics Association (MSOA) and that only indigenous tribes should hold office of sports associations and the fact that those running the sports associations kowtowed to that demand is a primary signal that sports is being looked at with a communal prism which is the antithesis to the idea of sports itself which allows a equal playground for all. When the athletes leave the state to perform elsewhere they have to compete with the best. Sports brooks no partiality, no ethnocentrism or communalism. It demands the best from the athletes in all the games and therefore the best is also expected from those running sports associations irrespective of what community they come from.
Experience counts. When an indigenous tribal person falls seriously ill, does he/she go looking for a doctor of the same tribe? If that is the case why do people leave the State and go outside for treatment? If they have no qualms about seeking treatment from the best doctors no matter their community or religion then why bring in such prejudices in sports? With this sort of attitude Sports is bound to suffer because incompetence is compounded when experienced people are axed.
It is not for nothing that in other states of India there are undergraduate courses in Sports Management. B-Schools also have specialization courses on Sports Management because the job requires a high degree of proficiency that brooks no failure or last-minute errors. Is there any person in the MSOA who has such a degree? Among the subjects covered in the Course are (1) Sports management policy (2) Sponsorship, marketing, and merchandise of sports (3) Sports finance & business (4) Sports law (5) Sports ethics (6) Sports organization (7) Sports event staging (8) Sports media communication and (9) Sports broadcasting among others. Do we have even one person qualified in Sports Management? And if Meghalaya doesn’t have one, should it not hire one such person? The MDA Government cannot deal with another fiasco during the National Games. That’s too close to the elections! The Meghalaya Games had virtually no corporate sponsorship because there’s no one to tap into that. It’s time the Meghalaya Government uses professionals to head the Sports Department and Associations.
