On December 21, the Wrestling Federation of India lastly had its elections for a new executive council. It ought to have marked a brand new starting for a sports activities physique that for many of 2023 had been beneath hearth due to allegations that ladies wrestlers had been sexually harassed and intimidated by Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the Bharatiya Janta Party MP who had headed the organisation.

But although Sanjay Singh was voted into the president’s place final week, it was Brij Bhushan who was garlanded and paraded in triumph. Sanjay Singh, in spite of everything, was his aide.

Amidst the uproar, the Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports suspended the newly elected body three days later. But it raised the query, but once more, about why so many Indian sports activities organisations are managed by politicians.

Of the eight sports activities during which India has gained Olympic medals, 4 – hockey, taking pictures, badminton and tennis – are headed by politicians. Sanjay Singh, who was voted in to go the Wrestling Federation of India, is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mum or dad organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party.

Ajay Singh, the president of the Boxing Federation of India, although not a politician, has labored on the Bharatiya Janta Party’s media strategy and is often credited with coining the celebration’s election slogan “Ab ki baar Modi sarkar”, this time a Modi authorities.

The All India Football Federation is headed by Kalyan Chaubey, a former participant who’s a member of the BJP. The president of the Indian Olympic Association, athletics legend PT Usha, is a Rajya Sabha MP nominated by the BJP.

The omnipotent secretary normal of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which governs the nation’s hottest and profitable sport, is Jay Shah – the son of Home Minister Amit Shah.

Also learn: Tennis star Somdev Devvarman on wrestlers’ protest – ‘Athletes are being silenced for speaking up’

Sports offers politicians a further lever to wield affect. The success of an athlete is used to advertise the concept that the system – and the politician on the helm – is doing a superb job. It offers the politician an opportunity to stay within the highlight beneath the gaze of thousands and thousands of sports activities watchers.

For occasion, on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, when the Indian contingent marched into the stadium, the tv broadcast confirmed a split-screen to beam pictures of sports activities minister Anurag Thakur fairly than simply deal with the athletes.

Adille Sumariwala, president of the Athletics Federation of India, mentioned that sports activities and politics can’t be separated. “They have to co-exist,” he mentioned.

Sumariwala is likely one of the few chiefs of a nationwide Indian sports activities federation who will not be a politician. He is a former nationwide 100m dash report holder and competed on the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, and has been president of the athletics physique since 2012.

In a resource-starved nation like India, politicians have the entry to energy that may swing selections vital for sports activities to thrive,. “They go and convince higher authorities, they sit in cabinet meetings because they are ministers,” Sumariwala mentioned. “And that is why we benefit. They have the reach.”

He defined, “It starts at the top. If the prime minister says that he will invest in sports, the ministers will say we need a larger budget for sport.”

Diana Edulji, former captain of the Indian girls’s cricket workforce, agreed that politicians have a job to play in sport. She was additionally part of the Committee of Administrators appointed by the Supreme Court of India to take care of the BCCI’s affairs from 2017 to 2019. “In this country, politicians are required because otherwise there is too much red tape-ism,” she mentioned. “Without their support, it is very difficult.”

In a current put up on X, previously Twitter, former Indian males’s hockey captain Viren Rasquinha offered suggestions for Indian sports activities federations to grow to be more practical. They included following the National Sports Code, a functioning web site with audited accounts posted together with the choice coverage for tournaments posted upfront. He additionally prompt a correct teaching pathway with a sound home competitors construction, a transparent anti-doping coverage and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Committee.

But for these strategies to be applied, sports activities organisations want the proper folks – “people who have the heart, soul and passion of being in sports”, he mentioned.

He emphasised that it was vital for paid professionals to be concerned in sports activities administration. “You just need to have the right balance – a combination of administrators for administrative matters and sportspeople to guide on the sports matters,” he mentioned.

Sumariwala famous that it’s the politicians fairly than athletes who’re more proficient at administrative work. “There is a lot of planning that goes into running a federation,” he mentioned. He likened the president of a sports activities federation to the chairperson or chief working officer of an organization. He defined, “If you don’t have the administrative ability, or the experience, you cannot run a federation.”

The administrative work, Edulji added, additionally doesn’t attraction to many retired athletes. She defined how most former gamers are inclined to get into teaching or commentary work fairly than getting concerned in honorary positions in federations.

Rasquinha, nonetheless, famous that operating a federation entails duties similar to elevating the profile of the game and fundraising along with organising tournaments and occasions.

“Every federation should have a high-performance director, who understands the technical aspect of the sport, who guides on competition structure, the selection process,” he mentioned. “You cannot have people who have never played the sport decide what should be the selection process.”

The hazard of getting politicians in cost is that processes can get mired in purple tape, as was evident throughout Brij Bhushan’s reign on the wrestling federation.

“These structures tend to be over bureaucratic, to the detriment of athletes,” wrote Somdev Devvarman in his column for Scroll. “The system should be nourishing and protecting its athletes. The second bureaucracy enters sport, then the winner is not sport. It is bureaucracy.”

In the final word evaluation, Sumariwala famous, it’s essential to acknowledge that sports activities and politics are interlinked.

“You cannot separate politics from sports,” he mentioned. “Whether it is the [International Olympic Council] taking a decision about Russia participating because of the Ukraine war, or something to do with the Israel war, the IOC is also taking political decisions. Right now they’re thinking of letting Russian athletes participate without using the name Russia. This is all politics.”