“Commonwealth games should transform East Delhi into a garden suburbia"

Sanjay Kapoor DELHI
From all accounts, Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs and also Panchayati Raj, Mani Shankar Aiyar was a doing a good job at the helm of the Petroleum Ministry. He raised its profile by building an alliance of Third World energy users to get a good deal from petroleum-exporting countries. He tried to pack in ideology, passion and some new thinking in managing the mundane affairs of Petroleum Ministry.

Now as the Sports Minister, the widely travelled and articulate Aiyar is bringing in a new perspective to developing sports in the country. He believes that it is the failing of the Government that India is so poor in sports. In India, sporting facilities are available to just about 50 million out of a total population of 650 million youth. He has been critical of the profligacy exhibited in organising the Commonwealth Games in Delhi—it would need Rs 7000 crore to organise a fortnight-long event. He is quick to clarify that the earlier estimates put together by the National Democratic Alliance government were “unrealistic”. He wants to leave a legacy that benefits the decrepit part of the city.

Hardnews met him in his smart office in Shastri Bhavan after he had just returned from a visit to Manchester.

Forty-six years have gone by since we last qualified for the World Cup football?
Yes, now I remember it was 46 years ago that we qualified. I imagine that it is desirable to organise football. Many of these countries actually deliberately and organisationally reached about to the farthest corner and therefore have a much larger reservoir from which to draw out talent. Small African countries like Togo and Ghana etc are figuring in the finals.

I think it is part of the affirmative action taken by FIFA to get African countries involved because otherwise they wouldn’t have really qualified.
They promised the same affirmative action to have India inducted into the World Cup over the next ten years. But I think the government has not done a good job of reaching out to the people because this country is enormous. When we talk about the millions to be brought within the net, we are not talking 2 or 3 million, the figures provided to me by the UGC [University Grants Commission] indicate that of approximately 650 million Indians who fall in the category of youth, and there are only about 30 million who have access to organised sport events in their schools. It seems that talent spotting, for a country which extends from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, is limited to the Defence Colonies and Malabar Hills. I have in mind the Panchayat Yuva Khel Abhiyan in terms which, I hope, over five years, to be able to organise sports facilities to every one of our two and half lakh village panchayats.

What are the financial implications of this kind of projection that you have made?
I would imagine that the financial implication will be a fraction of the cost of organising the Commonwealth Games and I am still working on some sort of exact figure. Whatever our commitments are with respect to the Commonwealth Games, we need to avail of the opportunity at our disposal to send the message of sports out to the large army of our youth who live in rural India, tribal India and urban slum areas.

You had talked of Rs 40-50 crore for building rural infrastructure?
That was an earlier scheme. At its peak the sum was Rs 45 crore which amounted to approximately Re 1 per child per year. How can you possibly provision the sports requirement of our children in such a small budget? I believe if we provided the infrastructure to every village panchayat then maintaining that infrastructure and acquiring sports consumers goods could well be a community effort. I believe that by investing, say, Rs 1,000 crore a year on sports facilities would be an investment with huge human resource returns.

Initially the Commonwealth Games were just about Rs 350 crore and it continued to balloon.
Well, when the Vajpayee government was in office and sanctioned India’s submissive bid, the estimate was Rs 150 crore for infrastructure and Rs 250 crore on organising the games. The projection of over Rs 400 crore meant that we could hold the Commonwealth Games at not much cost to the country. But before they went in for the final bid these figures were raised upwards.

What were the reasons for this upward revision?
Because I think the initial estimates were made on unrealistic vision and subsequent commitments were made without fully costing these games. Now we are facing a number of international commitments and the costs are escalating based on this international factor. I have just returned from Manchester where I was deeply impressed with the manner in which the local community, especially the disadvantaged sections of the local community, such as factory workers and even elderly people are made participatory. Muslim women are encouraged to learn to swim by providing women staff and women coaches. Commonwealth Games there were used to convert the most decrepit part of the city into a garden for the people. It has helped the very people who were living there to acquire new homes, new life, new employment. And they proudly show you East Manchester as it was in 1960 and what it is now. That is what is meant by legacy. So, if for example we were to use the Commonwealth as an opportunity to makeover East Delhi into a garden suburbia, I will be proud of the legacy of the Commonwealth Games.

But as a sports minister what kind of role can you play in translating all that you have said into reality?
I am studying the message of what I saw in Manchester and I hope that it falls upon the receptive ears.

But is it possible for you to influence the organising committee?
I don’t need to raise the matter with the organising committee, it has to do with planning division—DDA, Delhi Government. I can convey the message to them. The rest is up to them.

We have these Special Economic Zones (SEZs) coming up all over the place and is there any role for the panchayat because much of its land gets sold to SEZs?
I think we have seen what has happened in Orissa. Local communities can no longer be trampled on in the interest of economic development, whether it is public, private or multinational. 

Should the panchayats be consulted before land is given to SEZ’s?
It should be. But don’t forget that Panchayati Raj is a state subject and the powers in this respect are endowed with the state legislature. I am not in a position to be descriptive about these matters and I cannot say about others.

Do you think there will be a major social cost involved in setting up the SEZ?
Any intrusive economic development has the potential of being destructive to the interest of the local community and therefore I think it would be in the best interest of all to involve the local community through their elected representatives.