Chasing Olympic dream in Bihar govt’s `hellhole’

She is not far from the truth. The centre that the Bihar government had set up in 1976 to provide lodging, food and free training to its potential national-level women hockey players is housed in a building in Bariatu that drips when it rains. The kitchen is a breeding ground for flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches and snails. The utensils used to cook food are covered in a thick coat of carbon. And the centre’s four toilets, all of whom have doors missing, stink.

Several inmates whom The Indian Express spoke to said that due to the lack of cots at the centre they were even compelled to share beds. “Two in one bed is our daily affair,” said one inmate.

Most of the girls are tribals, for whom the staple food is rice and its boiled water. But all of them also relish eggs, mutton, chicken and milk, none of which is served at the centre. “Forget about these non-veg dishes. we don’t even get boiled water and rice adequately,” laments an inmate. Acknowledging that things are bad, in-charge Pushpa Topno Belhar says: “Things will improve with the funds promised by the government.”

That doesn’t seem likely. The Bihar government has an annual outlay of about Rs 1.95 lakh to provide food, electricity and clothes to the 25 inmates. This works out to a meagre Rs 650 per inmate per month. However, the broke state government couldn’t release even that during the last fiscal year (1999-2000). “As such the money allotted by the govenment per inmate is paltry and insufficient to provide nutritious food. This time, the fund was never released from Patna because we had no money to pay bribe to the babus there,” says an accountant of the centre.

The Indian women hockey team’s 1983 vice-captain, Savitri Purti, was once a resident of the centre and she is now lobbying to get fellow players all that she never got. Her ire is directed at corporate offices. “Anywhere else, in Korea or Australia, the food, lodging and clothing of the potential hockey players of their countries are sponsored by corporate bodies. In our country, there are no sponsors and a fund-starved state government like Bihar’s cannot do much.”

Despite that, the centre’s alumni list over the past 24 years has been quite impressive, including Savitri Purti; the national women’s hockey vice-captain of 1986, Biswasi Purti; and the latter’s teammates such as Alma Gudia, Dayamani Soy, Y. Sanga and Saloni Bhengra. Even Pushpa Pradhan, Masira Surin, Edlin Kerketta and Anita Ekka, who participated in the junior national women hockey coaching camp at Chennai this month, are inmates of the centre.

They all came here hoping to realise the Olympic dream, or to lift the World Cup. None knew they would end up struggling for good food and lodging.

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