Mending sports administration

Govt would do well to lay down ground rules

Two developments in the Indian sports arena underline the urgent need for a law regulating India’s fast-growing sports industry. One was the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to sack Anurag Thakur, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and other BCCI office-bearers for disobeying recommendations of a court-ordered panel. This action highlighted, more than anything else, the ambiguous nature of sports administration in India, operating as it does in the grey areas between private enterprise and national interest. The second was the strange decision, at the fag end of 2016, by the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) to appoint former presidents Suresh Kalmadi and Abhay Singh Chautala as lifetime presidents. This, despite the fact that both were forced to resign on charges of corruption; indeed, Mr Kalmadi was briefly arrested on accusations of omission and commission during the Commonwealth Games of 2010. No surprise, then, that the sports ministry wanted a word with the IOA and threatened to withdraw recognition unless the decision was rescinded. Mr Kalmadi had the good sense to decline the IOA’s honour till his name is cleared, though Mr Chautala has so far refused to do the same.

At one level, it is possible to argue that both interventions are unwarranted. Why should courts or governments dictate how a sports body should be run? In the case of the BCCI, in particular, is there a danger of the court becoming a super-administrator? These objections may be valid in abstract but in reality these organisations face a dilemma in that they are voluntary independent bodies but seek to have national monopolies. The other half-fiction of most international sports bodies, including FIFA and the Olympics movement, is that these national sports organisations have to be independent of government control, even though they draw administrative, logistical and security support, and occasionally finance from the government.

There is a contradiction here that has to be resolved, and it can only be done by the government. This does not, however, mean that the government should interfere in the administration of sports organisations — the impact of the overlap of politics and cricket has been deleterious enough for the Justice R M Lodha panel to proscribe politicians as BCCI office-bearers. But with many more sports beyond cricket – hockey, football, kabaddi, badminton and tennis – now gaining traction in India and, therefore, employing larger numbers of people and commanding ever-bigger sums of money via sponsorships and broadcasting rights, there is strong case for sports bodies to be subject to a modicum of legislative accountability beyond the opaque tax-free trust and non-profit laws that currently apply to them.

The law should, at the very least, demand minimum standards of fiduciary and financial disclosure, set codes of conduct and contractual rights for players and staff, and delineate broad qualifying criteria, failing which the government can withdraw support or recognition. Countries such as Australia, the UK and the US mandate broad rules of governance at various levels – amateur, federal and international – though not an overarching law. This ensures some degree of accountability and transparency. It would do India’s budding sports industry a world of good if it emulated countries with such dynamic sports industries.