Daily Editorial Update with Vocabulary – Ludicrous proposal

Politicisation of sport has
forever been a bane in India. As if
it were an ingrained trait in their ilk, the penchant of almost every Indian politico is to either rub shoulders
with sports celebrities of every hue or take upon themselves the ‘innate’ job of either making or
breaking one’s career. Given this backdrop, one should not be unduly shocked by
Saturday’s utterances coming from Union Minister Ramdas Athawale, despite them
being illogical and preposterous. 

Demanding sports quota for
academics and employment is one thing and demanding reservations for SCs and
STs in the Indian cricket team quite another. Social justice cannot be achieved
with such proposals. After all, sporting excellence is all about merit, a
blossoming of talent under the guidance of coaches. A politician or a Minister
demanding a probe into alleged match-fixing is understandable but seeking
reservations on caste and community basis is taking things a bit too far and
rather Quixotic, on the face of it.

Success stories in sports can
never be inspired by one’s family tree because they take shape by an
individual’s natural flair for the
discipline of his choice. That is the hallmark of an egalitarian set up. Even a cursory
glance at the list of iconic achievers in cricket and other specialisations
throws up an impressive number of athletes from almost all sections of the
society. After all, like arts, even sport knows no borders or communities and
that is the ground-reality, plain and simple.

When Adolf Hitler proclaimed
Aryan supremacy, a black American came up with one of the finest Olympic
achievements in Berlin right before the eyes of the German dictator. Lest one forgets, Jesse Owens
is not an isolated case. A majority of American legends, global role-models and
immortals are blacks, be it baseball, basketball or track and field Olympians.
Endowed with tremendous skills, they ruled the world with their exploits and
not because they enjoyed any ‘minority’ reservations to make it to their
respective national squads.

In India, some of those keeping
the country’s flag flying high across the firmament
are products of sports schools and exclusive associations. They are trained in
accordance with a regimen that puts them on the right track. Many weightlifters
from Telangana State and Andhra Pradesh have graduated from such
institutions.  An exemplary
economically-deprived product emerging from such a system is Malavath Poorna,
the mountaineer from Nizamabad, who on May 25, 2014, became the youngest girl
to scale Mount Everest.

She was merely 13 years and 11
months old when she conquered the world. It is ditto with Sadhanapalli Anand
Kumar from Khammam who displayed equally admirable endurance skills while on
the ascent. Their grooming has come
at the behest of Telangana Social
Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS). Given the
benchmarks that already exist, the Minister’s vote-bank divisive blabber should be taken with a pinch of
salt. If there is a reservation of the kind he moots, the dressing room will resemble a house that is on the edge,
which is a sure-shot recipe for disaster.