Arjuna Awards: Fresh rules but stale news

The minister declared that there would be a committee — comprising five Olympians, four Arjuna Awardees and two sports ministry officials — to scrutinise the nominations. And the panel, as the minister put it, would be headed by a sportsperson of ‘‘eminence.’’

Now consider the composition of the committee last time. It had Test cricketers like Bishan Singh Bedi, Chetan Chauhan and Olympian shooter Randhir Singh, among others.

Mind you, they are all Arjun Awardees, besides Chauhan being a politician and sports administrator while Randhir, a sports administrator. Since the new guidelines promise to keep the panel sportsperson-heavy, it remains to be seen which hat these ‘sportsman-turned-politicians’ or the ‘sportsman-turned-administrators’ will be wearing.

And then comes the moot question: Who will have the power to form this ‘‘unbiased’’ panel and nominate the “eminent” chairperson? Quite obviously, the Sports Minister.

Since all the panelists are going to be decided by the ministry, there is actually room for bias right from the start, leave alone the selection of candidates for the award.

Like former hurdler GS Randhawa, an Arjuna Awardee himself, and Dhronacharya Gurcharan Singh point out the larger question that remains to be answered is who will decide on the eminence of sportsperson who will form part of the panel.

And what is the guarantee that ‘‘eminent’’ sportsperson will not do the lobbying himself to make it to the panel?

According to the new guidelines, the criteria for the award in track and field events will be judged by the Asian and Commonwealth Games, the Olympics and the World Championship performance. In the past we have seen many contending that their performance in international meets, other than these major events, have gone unrecognised. As for now, they all can forget about getting the Arjuna Award. Then there is another school of thought that says the raise in the financial incentive — from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh — could make things messier. The increased prize money would lead to intense lobbying by sportspersons.

The lone bright spot in the guidelines is the scraping of ‘lifetime achievement’ award and renaming it as the Dhyan Chand Award. At least, this would avoid a comical scenario like the one where legendary athlete Milkha Singh was clubbed with the like of Rachna Govil.

But what could be the solution to this problem? Well, the government actually did take a step in that direction when it reduced the number from an average of 40 every year to just 15. If India really had so many worthy sportspersons to be honoured every year, we wouldn’t have just got one bronze at the last Olympics.

Sportspersons do need encouragement and they do get cash awards every year. But what makes the Arjuna Award cheaper are the perks attached to it. Hence the need of the hour is just three awards: Best Sportsperson of the Year, Best Junior of the Year and a Lifetime Achievement Award. And, in case there are no worthy winners, there should be a provision to scrap the award for that year.

This way the government can kill two birds in one shot: The Arjuna Award will regain its lost status and we will also see the beeline thinning.