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The game which has won 8 olympic gold medals(the high­est among all national teams) and is the national game of India is under a cri­sis. Indian hockey is see­ing the worst days since its glo­ri­ous days of 1928 (the first time it won olympic medal).

You guys might have already heard a lot about the Indian hockey team con­tro­versy regard­ing refus­ing to con­tinue the prepara­tory camps for the world cup (which starts in 6 weeks from now) because of their dues which are yet to be cleared. The play­ers demanded Rs 4.5 lakh each as ‘dues’ for their 2009 show­ing, a graded con­tract sys­tem, daily allowance dur­ing camp days and match days as well as match fees. Pre­dictably, HI (Hockey India) said it did not have the funds to accede to their request. They instead offered Rs 25,000 per player which the play­ers spurned it and stormed out of Tuesday’s nego­ti­a­tion in Pune. To this the fed­er­a­tion reacted by threat­en­ing to field a ‘B’ team if they don’t rejoin the camp in the next 48 hours. The prob­lem which now arises is that India only has a pool of 50 play­ers and the next set of play­ers have also taken a stand to sup­port their main team not only because their dues have not been paid till now but its the only time they will get a solution.

The ques­tions have been asked more recently to these national player regard­ing — “Is play­ing for nation more impor­tant or money?”. To which today senior player Deepak Thakur put the play­ers’ fight “against injus­tice” in perspective:

“Noth­ing comes before the nation, not even money. But why is it that only the play­ers have to think about the nation and not the admin­is­tra­tors? We have an impor­tant event round the cor­ner and that’s why we raised the issue now. Had we raised it ear­lier, it would have been swept under the carpet.”

I com­pletely agree to his point and its a know fact that in India other than politi­cians nobody gets their dues in time, unless they stage up a protest at a cru­cial time. Hold­ing any­thing to ran­som is not the proper way of solv­ing the prob­lems but look­ing at the con­di­tions I believe this is the only way to do it. The most shock­ing thing to know was Hockey being the national game of India, the fed­er­a­tion which is cur­rently admin­is­trat­ing it does not have enough funds to pay the dues of the player. This is what HI Pres­i­dent A K Matto had to say

“I told the play­ers that I have ‘X’ amount of money in my hand. If I give it to you, I have to give it to the women’s as well as junior team. I told them their all demands we will take it for­ward to new body and see what we can do best for them,”

“There is no ques­tion of salary. They are not paid employ­ees of HI. We offered them Rs 25,000 each which we can afford right now but they refused.” he added.

In one place Cricket which is not even a national game is see­ing dol­lar pour­ing, with each player get­ting more than 100 crores per annum from spon­sors and the BCCI con­tract sys­tem. Here HI is not even able to given them 4.5 lakhs rupees for the year 2009. Shashi Tha­roor talks about India being the soft power, Con­gress talk­ing about aus­ter­ity drive, nuclear deals & try­ing to spend crores of rupees just to host the com­mon wealth games to show the world that India is fast grow­ing and is a Soft power in mak­ing. But nobody is look­ing into the basic needs of a per­son. If a player who plays for the nations pride have to fight for his salary its really a shame for India as a country.

We do not pay player their much deserved awards and dues and expect them to win gold every­time they hit the turfs. Indian hockey — the win­ner of sev­eral Olympic gold medals — capped off omi­nous signs of its fall when it failed to qual­ify for the 2008 Bei­jing Games. That led to dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Indian Hockey Fed­er­a­tion, which drew heavy crit­i­cism for its man­age­ment. Hockey India replaced it.“But both Hockey India and Indian hockey are in dis­ar­ray now,” sports jour­nal­ist Harpal Singh Bedi said. “None appears to be hav­ing a clue how to ele­vate the sport to its past glory.”

Indian National Game play­ers going on strike cre­ates a dent to the Soft power sta­tus which Shashi Tha­roor has been preach­ing and going gaga over. Shashi Tha­roor stop tweet­ing about the high tea meet­ings and hypo­thet­i­cal lec­tures which never had solved com­mon mans prob­lem. A com­mon Indian man or to say the Indian Hockey National team does not even have a state of the art train­ing cen­ter of them­selves and you wanted a gym to be con­structed for your gov­ern­ment alloted house. Stop think­ing about Tourist visa start think­ing about peo­ple in India when they are not able to move and work freely in dif­fer­ent state (anti-Bihari sen­ti­ment on rise ) within India.

Once a Nations Pride Hockey is soon tur­ing out to be the Nations shame just because of gov­ern­ments inabil­ity to see and solve prob­lems at a com­mon mans level. The gov­ern­ment should know that only mak­ing state­ments at sum­mits and try­ing to depict India as a bet­ter place does not changes the real­ity. Its the peo­ple who change the image of the coun­try. With­out empow­er­ing the peo­ple of India we will not be able to grow or sus­tain. Its the peo­ple of India which holds the Nations Pride.

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• India squad face World Cup ban (telegraph.co.uk)