The Army rose to the challenge magnificently in this period of turbulence. But, it did not remain unscathed. Prolonged operational deployments in the most adverse conditions took a heavy toll. Not merely in morale and well being of the Force, but also in its effort at modernization. . . There continued to be a clamour for more troops. Not only from the military commanders, but also from political leaders from the regions, who saw the Army as the first as well as the last resort when everything else seemed to fail.95
The extra burden has been compounded with other sociological and economic developments that have led to a severe officer shortage. The shortage went up from 17.31 per cent in 1986 to 30.11 per cent in 1999. In 2000, the Army said it was short of 12,883 officers, 28.18 per cent of the sanctioned strength, because young men did not see it as a lucrative career any more.96 With the liberalization of the economy opening up lucrative options, the Army, which had always attracted ‘gentlemanly elites’ until well into the 1970s,97 in 2008 saw its training institutes—the National Defence Academy (Khadakvasla) and the Indian Military Academy (Dehradun)—being under-subscribed.98
In an institution stretched to the limit by its professional demands, sport has had to take a backseat. An anecdote from 31 Armoured Division tellingly illustrates this point. When Major General G.D. Singh took command, he issued orders for a new inter-regimental sporting competition within the division. This was a departure from the usual inter-brigade competitions at the division level. As part of his efforts to build fraternal ties across his command, even a ladies’ sport meet for Army wives was organized in Jhansi. But the sting was in the tail. Orders were issued that regiments not taking part in the competition would have to pay a monetary fine that would go into the division’s private discretionary fund. The order reflected the apprehension that regimental teams might simply not turn up. Where once sporting competition helped define regimental pride, now the threat of fines was needed to ensure participation. It is not that commanding officers did not want to participate. They simply did not have enough resources, time or men to spare for regular training. To give an example, regiments that had been operating with 50–60 officers each in the 1970s, were now operating with only 15–16. Where was the time for specialized sport? But orders had been passed, so some regiments simply scraped together a team as a formality.99
The professional landscape for the average Army officer has changed drastically. If Col. V.B. Mohan had raised an AD Missile Regiment in the 2000s, he would not have had the time or the personnel to focus on sporting glory.
The Army’s changing orientation has had a drastic impact on its sporting achievements. In the 1960s and 1970s, teams like the Signals, ASC and the Guards were prominent contenders in national hockey, for instance. In recent years, however, Services teams have not been the dominant force they once were in national sport. The Army continues to play sport but the exigencies of its professional pressures mean that specialization and the competitive edge at the national level has gone down. Competitive sport demands time, dedication and specialized training. In a previous age, commanding officers could encourage and cajole their men to indulge in it. In peace-time, professional reputations, after all, were built on such men. Now, though the pride and the intent remain—witness the special celebrations in Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore’s unit when he won the Olympic silver—professional reputations increasingly depend on the battlefield. Hard-pressed and under-manned Commanding Officers, having to choose between soldiers who fight and soldiers who play, increasingly are loath to let their men off for training. Budding Army sportsmen often have to make the difficult choice between a military career and sporting success.100
‘This is What Army Officers are There For’:
Lt. Col. Rathore and Mission Olympics
When Lt. Col. (then Major) Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won the silver in the double trap event at Athens, finishing behind the UAE’s Sheikh Ahmed Al-Maktoum, his success brought home the silent role of the Army in India’s sporting endeavours more than ever before. In a nation starved of Olympic success, Rathore, in his first triumphant comments, touched upon a theme that was to become the staple feature of the discourse around the Army and sport in days to come. ‘That is what we army officers are there for,’ he said, ‘to make our country proud.’101 Looking beyond the patriotic chest-thumping that followed, including the fervent appeal to the Army by President Kalam alluded to earlier, a closer analysis shows that Rathore is as much an example of what is right with the Army’s sport as what is wrong with it.
Rathore, a graduate of the 77th NDA course,102 passed out with a sword of honour from IMA before being commissioned into 9 Grenadiers. Military training gave him his first lessons in shooting and Rathore served with the Grenadiers in 1994–96 in the volatile Baramulla and Kupwara regions of Kashmir.103 The exigencies of military service meant that he did not take up competitive shooting until 1998. In the selection trials for the Mavalankar competition, he participated in double trap, trap and skeet and won two gold medals and one silver medal. He was then advised to concentrate on double trap. ‘Initially, there was no one to help him and he would watch seniors shoot and try to rectify his faults and mistakes.’104 While honing his skills at the Army Marksman’s Unit in Mhow,105 Rathore asked for a posting to Delhi. His mother Manu Rathore hints at the difficult choice the young major had to make at that early stage of his shooting career:
He chose to be posted at Delhi so that he could train without interruptions. He did not even bother about his promotions. All this while, Gayatri [his wife] has been with him, providing him support and comfort. She has been his pillar of strength, sharing his problems and calming him when the going got tough. She has been managing his schedule, booking his tickets and hotel rooms. In Italy, she would sit in the basement with the machine, pulling targets and assisting him.106
No sportsman can be a stranger to personal tales of sacrifice and hardship. But Rathore’s tale holds a lesson in the strengths and the weaknesses of the Army’s potential for creating world-class champions. The Army did support Rathore and its facilities provided him the bedrock for his early grooming. But to go beyond that, to compete with the best global sportsmen, you need wider exposure and the opportunity to train with the best. Rathore succeeded on the strength of his own drive but he was later to gently mention the kind of expert help that was sorely needed for Indian sportsmen in government service:
. . .there should be a set of people who should be entirely coordinating with these top few shooters where they want to train, how they want to train, with whom they want to train, which competitions they must shoot as training and which competitions they must shoot to win.
If they are having problems at home those problems must be sorted out, because sportsmen, especially shooters, would not be able to concentrate if he has got a family problem. If there are any administrative problems, then the government can easily solve them.
For example, it could be related to somebody’s posting. An athlete may not be happy at the Railways; then move him to where he wants, because this is for a national cause. This is just giving an example of how the government can come forward and help.107
Consider this: long before he won the Olympic medal and became a national hero, Rathore had already won gold at the 2003 World Cup in Sydney. Yet, it took a full year even after Athens for Rathore to get the Army’s permission to sign up for the endorsement contracts that were coming his way. In a world where sporting success is increasingly based on specialized training, the Army’s seclusion from the wider global structures of sport is jarring. The best training facilities abroad cost money, money that could come in by way of endorsements. As advertisers lined up outside his door, Rathore had to wait for the defence ministry’s approval.108 He could have chosen to leave the Army but he did not, and when the permission came he chose to share his money with the Army:
Fifty percent of my endorsement money goes to the Indian Army. It’ll use it to promote sport. I have great regard for
General Joginder Singh, who stood up to this changed environment, thought out of the box and has set a healthy precedent.109
Conditioned to working in splendid isolation, a tradition-bound Army moved slowly towards embracing the new global reality of sport as a commercial enterprise. Even though Rathore personally is all praise for the Army’s support, the fact is that even a national hero like him had to wait his turn. Imagine the challenges faced by lesser sportsmen. Ever the gentleman, Rathore touches upon this gently:
I have always stated that the entire Olympic movement in India is alive because of government support, and that stands true. . .a lot that I have achieved is courtesy to the funding provided by the government.
Yet, a lot needs to be done to improve not only the sport of shooting, but other Olympic sports also. The progress towards improvement is slow and at this speed it will take us ages to win the number of medals that India should actually be winning. A lot of things need to be done, and need to be done faster. There are a lot of policies, a lot of directions, which are in place, but the execution is lacking.110
The permission for Rathore to cash in on his brand image came partly due to a realization in the ministry of defence that Rathore could be used to show the Indian Army in a ‘positive light’. Therefore, he was to only take up endorsements that would project ‘the image of the nation and image of the Army in good light’.111 This explains the Army billboards of Rathore and his projection in the recruitment drive for officers.
Rathore’s success came soon after the Army’s widely publicized plan for creating Olympic champions was put into practice. In 2001, Army Chief Gen S. Padmanabhan, concerned about the lack of Olympic success, set up the Army Sport Institute (ASI) in Pune under Col. M.K. Naik, a former Asian Games gold medallist in rowing. Naik visited sport institutes across the country to study their shortcomings and set about creating a sporting academy of international standard. Key sports disciplines were identified and his officers then recruited budding youngsters from across the country who had excelled at the sub-junior and junior levels. Once selected, the boys were recruited in the rank of havaldar with a monthly income of Rs 6,000–8,000. Their living costs—travel, clothes, food and other essentials—became the responsibility of the ASI, which was based upon a Rs 60 crore allocation from the defence ministry. According to Naik, the training had one aim: ‘We want them to remember at all times that they are here to get India an Olympic medal’.112
By itself, such an academy is not novel. The Chinese have long had such training mechanisms aimed at Olympic glory, so have the Australians. What is unique about India is that here, it is the Indian Army that has taken the lead, in consonance with its wider objective of safeguarding national notions of pride and honour. The move was greeted with widespread media approval, one reporter calling it ‘an emergency rescue act by the Army’.113 By 2008, 115 sports cadets were under training at the ASI. According to the Army, ‘The potential candidates are selected primarily based on performance in a structured selection process, without any reservation/quotas of any kind’.114
In some ways, the new Olympic mission of the Army was built upon a long-standing tradition sporting talent at various regimental training centres. For instance, Punjab Regiment, artillery and engineers had always followed a practice of hiring talented children from their recruiting bases under special Boys Companies with a view to building their own talent pool. They were later recruited as soldiers. In 2008, 952 sports cadets were being trained in 15 such Boys Companies across the country’s regimental centres (See Table 10.1).115 The ASI simply borrowed this template. The difference was that this time, the Olympics was the explicit goal, not just regimental glory.
Table 10.1
Boys Sports Companies
Ser. No Name and loc of BSC Sports Disciplines
1. BSC, MEG & Centre, Bangalore Boxing, Hockey, Swimming
2. BSC, ASC Centre, Bangalore Hockey, Football,
3. BSC, DRC, Faizabad Hockey, Handball, Volleyball
4. BSC, RVC Centre, Meerut Cantt Equestrian
5. BSC, RRRC, Delhi Cantt Athletics, Volley Ball, Basketball
6. BSC, 11 GRRC, Lucknow Football, Boxing, Shooting
7. BSC, BEG & Centre, Roorkee Athletics, Gymnastics, Kayaking & Rowing
8. BSC, ASI, Pune Archery, Athletics, Boxing, Diving, Wrestling, Weight Lifting
9. BSC, 58 GTC, Shillong Archery, Boxing, Football
10. BSC, 1 STC, Jabalpur Boxing, Football, Athletics
11. BSC, BRC, Danapur Football, Hockey, Archery
12. BSC, Arty Centre, Hyderabad Boxing, Athletics, Basketball
13. BSC, BEG & Centre, Kirkee Boxing, Rowing, Wrestling, Gym
14. BSC, MIRC, Ahmednagar Shooting, Archery
15. BSC, RRC, Fatehgarh Athletics, Basketball, Swimming
In a marked departure from the past, the ASI also brought in foreign coaches. By 2003, foreign specialists had been hired for boxing, sports medicine, archery and general theory.116 This openness is a welcome departure from the hide-bound past and the Army’s sports training is well spread across specialized centres across the nation. Tables 10.2-10.6 show the various centres, the key disciplines and the number of sportsmen being trained in February 2008.
Table 10.2
Army Sports Institute, Pune117
Table 10.3
Army Shooting Node, Mhow118
Table 10.4
Army Yachting Node, Mumbai119
Table 10.5
Army Rowing Node, Pune120
Table 10.6
Army Equestrian Node, Meerut121
The tables above also point to the weakness of the system. While the whole effort is admirable, the Army remains largely closed to outsiders. The lack of numbers in the civilian columns in the tables shows that these facilities are restricted to armymen and women alone. That begs the question: would it not make a big difference if civilian medal hopefuls like Anjali Bhagwat, Mansher Singh, Manavjit Singh and Abhinav Bindra were given the opportunity to use the facilities and the equipment at the Army’s excellent shooting ranges? To give another example, in 2007, National Cadet Corps cadets stood second in the junior shooting national championship, second only to the Army, winning 34 medals in various categories.122 Many of its young shooters beat Army marksmen but there is no institutionalized mechanism to adopt them for further training in either the armed forces, the paramilitary forces or the state police forces. Most of these NCC shooters currently come from low-income backgrounds and without institutional support their talent may well be lost to India.
When we first contacted the Army in 2005 for data on Mission Olympics, we thought it would be the easiest thing in the world. This, after all, was a showcase project of the Army and had been widely publicized already. We thought the Army’s publicists would jump at the idea. Yet, we were first curtly informed by the spokesperson in Delhi that he was only authorized to give such information to journalists, not to writers. ‘Call the Director General Military Training,’ he said and hung up. When we found the military training department’s numbers, the colonel there proved most courteous, but he too said he would need special clearance to release such data. When repeated written requests were stonewalled with the standard ‘no clearance yet’ response, we decided to use the time-tested method of New Delhi: influence. Through the good offices of family friends, we personally spoke to at least three senior generals in Army headquarters. Everyone was sympathetic, but nothing moved. In the end, a full year after our initial inquiries, a senior defence journalist, well respected in Army circles, helped us get the data. It was like we had been fishing for the Army’s best-kept secrets, troop deployments and the like. The point of narrating this experience is that while the Army continues to be a bulwark of the nation, following its highest traditions in matters of sport, perhaps it could do with a refreshing air of openness. Until it breaks out of its splendid isolation and embraces the winds of change holistically, the task of winning Olympic medals will not get any easier.
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Torchbearers of a Billion
India at the Games
For the record, India has won just 18 medals in its chequered Olympic history between 1928 and 2008. This is not counting the two medals won by the mysterious Norman Pritchard at the Paris Games of 1900.1 For a nation that started participating in the Games in earnest in 1924, 18 medals in 24 Olympics hardly evoke a sense of fulfillment. Eleven of the 18 have come in hockey (eight gold, one silver and two bronze medals), two each in shooting and wrestling and one each in tennis, women’s weight lifting and boxing. Clearly then, success stories have been few and far between. Accounts of failure far outnumber standout Indian performances. Stories of near-finishes have become even more poignant in this context, converting our Olympic journey into a tale of rued chances and laments of what could have been.
Olympics-The India Story Page 33
