Olympics happen every 4 years. Immediately follows are our recriminations, on why we suck in them.
So, I decided to do some digging.
I wanted to know who actually runs the sport federations, in which our athletes compete.
And the results are not very surprising.
I analyzed 32 positions across Athletics, Badminton, Boxing, Shooting, Hockey, Archery, Weightlifting, Swimming & TT
And here are some tidbits
1. Except Hockey & Athletics, no President is a sportsperson 2. All Presidents except Athletics are politicians.
3. The Hockey President is both a sportsperson and a politician. The only one in that category.
4. Now, If you go one level below, at the Senior Vice President or Hon Secretary General (I have no idea what it means) - Except Athletics and TT, none of them are sportspersons.
5. Eight People at that level are also politicians
Now this is where things start getting murky
6. All these federations have a position called Vice President. There are sum total of 63 VPs, across all these federations
And guess how many of them are sportspersons?
Six
In fact, the Table Tennis Federation of India, doesn't even have profile pictures of their VPs.
7. Some sporting bodies such as Archery, Boxing, Weightlifting and Swimming are made entirely of Politicians.
They have Zero sportspersons in the governing body.
8. All these sporting federations are responsible for preparing and sending our athletes to the Olympics. And guess how many Olympians are present in these positions?
A grand total of four.
And in that 4 Olympians - Two belong to the Athletics Federation.
And in this digging, there are some other interesting facts that I stumbled across
The secretary general of Hockey is a guy named Bhola Nath Singh
Now 2 years ago, he was Wrestling Federation of India Vice President.
Now he is running Hockey.
Must be a very talented man
The story of our Table Tennis Federation is even more incredible.
Dushyant Chautala, the Haryana politican was the President of TTFI from 2017 to 2022, when the Delhi High Court suspended it citing "Sorry State of Affairs" . They ordered a fresh set of elections for President.
And guess who stood and won in that elections - the first woman President of TTFI - Meghana Ahlawat.
Who also happens to be the wife of Dushyant Chautala.
He totally Laloo Prasad Yadaved the post of TTFI President.
And we have to live with it
There are so many things this Govt is doing to improve the sporting calibre of this country.
But unless and otherwise we clean the Augean Stable of Indian Sports Federations - We will continue to recriminate after every Olympics - instead of Celebrating.
Due to the 4 image limit I missed adding the last image. So here it is.
P:S: Destroying the integrity of sporting bodies is not new to the Chautala family. His Uncle Abhay Chautala almost destroyed the Boxing federation of India. His nephew is now playing TT.
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This post is inspired by Mr Piyush Goyal and a humble auto with whom I had the privilege or riding in Andheri.
Don’t worry this is not one of those “I met my Uber driver who gave me fictional political lessons” posts.
This is something else.
As is the norm today, the auto dude had his smart phone mounted in front of him. And instead of the usual obscene titillating reels, he had something else opened in his screen.
It was a fantasy league app.
He was making a team, while he was driving the Auto thru Mumbai traffic
Other than how his multitasking put an iPhone to shame, I wondered what actually happened to come to a situation where Dream XI accounts exceed Broking accounts
So, sit back and travel with me thru the legal blackhole that made India the world’s largest fantasy sports market
For all of the hatred towards it shown by many people, the most important thing the IT industry showed was that, for the first time in India's history, you could setup a company in India & make it big with only your hard work and intelligence.
You didn't need anything else.
If you trace the ownership history of all big companies in India, prior to the advent of IT, you can classify them as
1. Govt owned 2. Owned by the people who were Govt lackeys. 3. Big named businessmen who were British lackeys 4. Owned by people who bribed / swindled the govt
Meritorious and hardworking people in India, but with limited capital, could never actually even dream of starting a business in India.
Before the IT industry showed the way.
More entrepreneurs were created by IT industry in 5 years post 1992, than we did in the 40 before it
If you ever want to see an example of how something that began right and then went wrong pretty quickly, look no further than the months of June and July in 1914.
Those 2 months are the worst example how everything that could go wrong, went wrong
And killed 22 million people.
Immediately Prior to 1914, like the 500 years before 1914, countries in Europe didn't trust each other.
Because, Europe was a bar where every country had fought with the other country for no reason other than fighting each other.
Because in 19th Century Europe
British fought the French.
The French fought the Germans.
Germans fought the Austrians.
The Austrians fought the Turks.
The Turks fought the Russians.
And the Italians were fighting amongst themselves.
Basically everyone was either fighting someone else or themselves.
Indian equity market is now at a point where every theory, thesis, formula and literature about stock markets, stocks and investments, has been run over by a king size bulldozer, and whatever remained has been burnt with a flamethrower.
Let's take the recent IPO of Ola Electric
The company not only successfully listed but has zoomed faster than ISROs GSLV rocket. The returns are so outsized that anyone who didn't apply for the IPO, looks like a fool today.
But then, if you look at the financials, the story is a little different.
Let's start with the operating cash flow. Because If I write about P&L, fanboys will descend on my TL by saying "The EV Revolution has just begun", "The Pastmaster strikes twice" etc etc.
Let's see if Ola is actually making money from its operations, which is selling scooters.
Today is Budget day. Naturally, everyone in your office, including your boss, will be discussing the Budget. So how do you sound intellectual in those discussions?
Don't worry. Here's a primer on how to sound amazing on Budget Day, without even watching the budget.
First, start off with a sentence containing phrases like, proactive tax Rationalization, infrastructure financing, economic intervention.
Say stuff like, "This budget should focus on proactive economic intervention with infrastructure rationalization"
Also given that middle class is the new flavour of the season, say things like, "This govt should focus on widening the tax base to reduce the burden on the middle class and stimulate the economy by prudent tax stratification in order to boost consumption"
Unpopular opinion : All our aspirations of replacing China as an advanced electronics manufacturing hub, Building 3 nm chips, becoming the biggest ship builders on the planet can wait
We first need to lay roads that don't resemble the lunar surface at the slightest hint of rain
Case in point are the entry roads to Mumbai.
Imqgine the worst criminal you can think of, then visualize the worst form of hell to send him to, then visualize the road that will get him there.
They will still be better and smoother than the entry roads to Mumbai.
BMC has converted entering Mumbai into a Crystal maze type game, filled with booby traps and insurmountable obstacles, laying a Challenge to all those who dream of entering Mumbai
It's like BMC is telling them "Life will be tough in Mumbai & this entry road is the trailer"