All I want is to have a chance to support my city team every weekend (be it any sport basketball, soccer, hockey and no cricket is not counted- how can 11 overweight,overpaid idiots waiting for their chance to hit a ball be counted as sport and are they even the best talent India has, Im not sure as there is any backup data to prove it, u need to know the right guys to get there) and not have to depend on a charade called IPl to get my fix of some decent Indian teams to follow(im pretty sure this should count as a fundamental right for citizens).
It has been 60 years and till now we do not even have a national league for any major sport ( I am not even dreaming of state and Zonal leagues, which would be the buffer to provide steady talent for the national league, but that perhaps in another lifetime). There has been a start in football but its such a joke that I pity Zee Television which is paying money to broadcast it, in another time and place it could have been an investment of sheer genius, my condolences Mr.Subash Chandra. That is still as disheartening as the fact that there seems to be no plans to develop one nor any demand for the same.
And if underutilising the inherent physical skills of millions of rural youth ,by denying them a platform to excel in the very field where the Urban counterparts do not hod a candle to them, is not a shame then what is. We see millions of these wasted talent employed as day labourers, when they could be/should be earning a self respecting earning as sportsmen and allied sectors. Some of you might not all would qualify to play professionally, then what about them?? There would be jobs in ground maintainence (a specialized field in most self respecting sporting nations)/stadia managers/physical trainers/coaches/talent scouts.
Well are we denying opportunities for just one set of individuals. I believe not. All the freshly minted MBA's selling toothpaste are doing because the existing openings are saturated. Each self respecting club needs to employ a marketing manager, a public relations manager, a CEO , finance professionals and a technical director. For this whole ecosystem to flourish there needs to be firms handling the players (instead of handful handling the inflated cricketing Egos and the odd boxer, the system would need them in hundreds who would each need to have field staff to scout and manage talent and they would require smart sophisticated youth). There would need to be dedicated channels handling all these matches every week and then of course educated youth would need to fill the extra sports columns that these matches would generate.
Well yes a couple of more people would get a few lousy Jobs but is it really worth the effort??? Darlings what about the community spirit that the teams would generate. A team winning a league or having a good run in the league is the best booster shot for the whole community. Lets be fair, what options on the weekend do we offer to our citizens of most towns and cities. With the advent of Multiplexes and malls, some shopping and a movie. Is the best, after a millineum of developing India's culture, we can come up with!! Just imagine the day when on our weekend would involve a choice of a really hip play, a concert, 2 absolutely crunch matches of your city's Football and Hockey teams and a Good movie. Now compare that with the option of a good movie and McDonald's burger!! Is this Humane to deny our society such opportunities and to deny the talent a stage to express themselves on a regular basis.
Lets us just extrapolate numbers to see what kind of difference we can make. Lets start on a deluded trip and Imagine that there are only 4 sports in the country (hockey, football, cricket and basketball). There would be 2 divisions each for every league. Meaning 2 divisions of 20 teams each in the national league (40 teams), 6 zonal leagues of 2 divisions each (240 teams) and each of lets say 28 states also have 2 divisions each (1120 teams). That makes it nearly 1400 teams/sport/gender. Let us take a conservative figure of 25 players in each team and a support staff of 5 per team (coach, assistant coach,specialist coach/masseur, physical trainer,physiotherapist). That makes a guaranteed employment of 42000/Per sport. Lets put that figure into 4 and we have 160,000/gender (i.e for males/females) people gainfully employed. Gentlemen, we have 320,000 rural youth gainfully employed (they have a clear progression path if they have the skills, which the much touted road building/stonecutting in NREGA may not offer), assuming am employee strength of 7 (2 stadia managers, 3 ground staff, 2 in the canteen) we have approximately 40,000 people employed (1400 teams per sport*4 sport*7 employees/team).A large chunk of it, would come from the rural hinterland (an assumption I consider safe). Is any thing more criminal than to see this unused potential breaking stones and our esteemed politicians claiming that they have found the answer to India's poverty in NREGA (up yours!!).
What kind of urban employment (people with more "polished" skills). Let us take that each club would employ 5 of such people (marketing, HR, finance, technical director and a CEO). That gives us 25000 direct employment. If we add the media and the talent management jobs and we can easily cross 40,000 new employment.
The whole irony is that we do not even need to start from scratch to put this platform up. Most towns I have been to has some sort of an amateurish leagues for all sport and stadia (uniformly empty), which hosts these matches. All we need to do is to categorize the clubs in terms of resources and put them in the leagues (national, zonal,state and district) and let the system stabilise for 2 years. We would need to invest in getting the relevant professional talent from abroad to guide us in the first years after which the Indians (with their well earned reputations to ape well) would start taking over.
Man I would love to see the day when I can buy the season ticket for FC Bangalore and then pay an agent an exorbitant sum to get the elusive ticket for Mohun Bagan/East Bengal derby (right now there is no FC Banaglore) and I am sure officials in Bengal would pay me to watch the Kolkata Derby (it would fill another seat). But I am also pretty sure, that I will not see the day (the officials incarge of our sport federations are happy with the current 1 foreign trip a year which they get as a perk, little realising that they could be the leader of a 1000 crore league if they allow so). SO Iam selecting the next best option and emigrating as fast as I can (hoping to be comfortably setteled in USA before a certain Mr. Beckham hangs up his expensive boots after playing for the Los Angeles galaxy).
