During my college days a friend used to tell us the story of the domestic help in his house. Once in a while, the young boy would be paid a few extra bucks to watch movies at a local Cinema Hall -Movie Theater in local parlance.
One such occasion, no sooner the guy returned back after watching a movie, my friend asked him how was it. The boy replied nonchalantly - "HERO ASILA, HEROINE ASILA, HERO NAACHILA, HEROINE NAACHILA, SABU SAIYA", meaning "The hero came, the heroine came, the hero danced, the heroine danced. It's all the same old stuff".
On the aftermath of India's poor performance at this year's Olympics at Rio, mired by our ever flaunting officials mishandling and mistreating our athletes, accountability was fixed with some heads rolling off the block. The forever selfie taking Minister was sacked, followed by the officials who were made accountable, suspended immediately from their service.
Hang on - as the year 2016 comes to an end, nothing of that sort has happened till date. Rather, the corruption tainted Suresh Kalmadi is made a Life President of the Indian Olympics Association - A wrong step in the wrong direction, with a wrong message sent out.
What sucks is that after the Olympics fiasco, so far we have seen little or no accountability. As far as I know, not a single head has rolled, not a single official has been held accountable. The Sports minister, heads of dud Sports bodies, Secretaries (assistant secy, joint, elbow sec, deputy, under or whatever secy), 501 secretaries with 601 different ranks, have been untouched so far.
The rehabilitation of an inept and corrupt official in Kalmadi neither sends the right message, nor augurs well for the future of our Sports. Cometh the next Olympics at Tokyo in year 2020, miles of ribbons will be cut and plenty of inagurations made, all by our pot bellied, lily white Dhoti (loincloth) Clad Netas and equally pot bellied Babus. Ironically most of those will take place on sports arenas, with their attires and figures neither bearing any sportive look or suggesting a sportive outlook.
We may not have the same person as the Sport minister then, who unlike our bureaucrats, will be accountable to the electorates in the next election of 2019. There is no guarantee that he will win. Even in such an eventuality, it can't be assured of he getting in charge of the Sports Ministry.
But what is guaranteed, is the time bound promotions Sub deputy to Deputy secy, Deputy to under secy, Under to above secy, the Super secy to Super Duper Secy and so on. They would have tilled on stacks of files, wasting (synonymous with looting) tons of money from public exchequer, rubbing their moustache sans accountability (glad they have a retirement age of 60).
End result ? Expect more or less the same at the next Olympics. A la the pair of Sindhu and Sakhi last time, we will see a Sita and Geeta, Ram aur Shyam, Sakhi and Rakhi saving our grace once again. Those officials who till then be ignoring the medal winners, will pull up the sleeves of their Safari suits to pose for selfies with the nascent winners.
It yet forces me to repeat my often quipped colloquial Odia proverb,
NARATTOMA DASA KAHE,
KOU SALA BHALA NUHE.
Roughly transliterated,
Narottam Das says; Not a single SALA (scoundrel) is a good Fella.
Suresh Kalmadi, accused of corruption during the Congress regime is now back firmly in saddle in a BJP led government, the factor remaining constant are the Bureaucrats, our public servants. But our servant 30 years ago was way ahead of time, as his saga of SABU SEIYA (all the same) continues.
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