It is awards time!

August is the month for a debate over National sports awards!

It is almost impossible to satisfy all sections of the sports-loving populace when it comes to selection of awardees for Arjuna, Khel Ratna, Dronacharya and Dhyan Chand awards.

Successive governments have brought in changes in the format, eligibility rules and basic structure of these awards but not a year passes without some controversy or the other.

Logic has taken a beating through these exercises at laying down guidelines, no matter how well-intentioned these efforts might have been.

After the uproar caused in 2001 when Milkha Singh was chosen for the Arjuna Award (after all these years!) alongside “lesser achievers”, the Sports Ministry decided to change the composition of the panel and brought in more sportspersons into it.

However, even though it was a welcome step, with eminent sports personalities heading the panel, controversies continued to dog selection of awardees.

Canvassing is the rule than exception

If “canvassing” was to be a “disqualification”, canvassing has become the order of the day! So much so the ministers openly allowed athletes “aggrieved” by the selection to meet them and air their complaints, sometimes referred the file back to the panel for reconsideration or else ordered that athletes not “eligible” for a particular year (as it happened in the last Olympic year) for consideration be considered because of their achievements in Olympics.

This sort of bending of rules or ‘grandstanding’ only brought in further complications. If Ronjan Sodhi had enough claims to get the Khel Ratna in 2012 (for his performance in 2011 with enough to fall back on 2010 also if that was needed) when he was edged by Olympic medal winners Vijay Kumar and Yogeshwar Dutt, he did not have anything to show the next year (for 2012 performance) when he was finally chosen for the Khel Ratna!

“Instant results and instant rewards”, though popular and appealing to the public, could lead to unnecessary controversies. Others in the fray, when Sodhi was chosen, cried foul.

Shooter Anjali Bhagwat, herself at the centre of another awards controversy in the past, who argued in favour of Ronjan Sodhi was criticized by several people for no fault of hers. There was no necessity for the other committee members to be swayed by her arguments if she was not being truthful and logical. Nor was it necessary that she should have argued in favour of someone else.

“But wasn’t it time to bring in some more changes in the format? Let’s make Khel Ratna also a longer term award instead of one for the ‘most outstanding performance’ in a year”.

So seemed to be the argument with which the ministry officials changed the structure of the Khel Ratna last year.

Khel Ratna structure changed

It was a sad development. This award instituted first for the year 1991-92 had seen many an outstanding sportsperson being chosen for it for their most remarkable feat in a particular year. It was like choosing the “sportsperson of the year”.

By making it a “four-year affair”, the Government has now made it a blown-up version of the Arjuna award. Worse, an athlete could be chosen for an Arjuna award in a particular year and again chosen for the Khel Ratna next year for the same performance that earned him/her the Arjuna the previous year or the year before that!

In a way the ‘Khel Ratna’ has been devalued beyond shape. Still it carries a bigger cash award (Rs 7.5 lakh compared to Rs 5 lakh) than that for the Arjuna award and is sought after the most by those who have already gained the Arjuna.

All this can be explained away as the result of various consultations and opinions expressed by athletes and administrators, the media and the sports enthusiasts perhaps.

The points system

But can there be any rationale for bringing in a points system that could determine who gets an award and who does not? Especially when that points system defies logic and common sense and may mock at the highest achievements by an athlete?

I had written about this in The Hindu in January this year, pointing out the most glaring blunders in the points system. 

One does not know whether anything has been amended. It doesn’t look that it has been.

Thus P. V. Sindhu’s bronze medal in the World Badminton Championships  in 2013 is worth only five points since the World Badminton is an annual event (and not a four-yearly championship) while someone in any discipline, who might manage to get a bronze in an Asian Games will get 20 points.

The comparison becomes ridiculous when one takes a meet like the World athletics championships. Say a silver medal for our discus thrower Vika Gowda in next year’s World Championships would be worth 15 points (half of the four-year World championships), but a weightlifter who might have won three consecutive silver medals (not even gold) in the Commonwealth championships would have earned 30 points or just one silver in the Commonwelth Games would have fetched him 20 points.

 If both are in contention for the Khel Ratna, whom would you vote for?

Though no points had been allotted for Olympic medals in the statement issued by the ministry in January this year, and there has been no mention of the Khel Ratna also being brought under the points system, it seems points are being allocated for that also.

And by that yardstick, para athlete H. N. Girisha’s silver medal in high jump in the 2012 Paralympics will outscore the points of Sindhu, woman discus thrower Krishna Poonia, and Vikas Gowda, but will not match that of tennis player Somdev Devvarman who has two gold medals from the Guangzhou Asian Games and one from the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

All these sportspersons are in contention for this year’s Khel Ratna.

For the record, it could be mentioned here that there are 42 para classifications in athletics alone in para sports where there is a broad classification based on 10 impairments.

Keep gathering points, forget about the big one

The simple logic here could be if you are aiming for the Khel Ratna or the Arjuna, keep piling up points in every other meet that you can get to compete in, by winning the odd silver or bronze. In the end you might just be able to edge the first Indian ever to win a World Athletics Championships gold or silver in the race for the ‘Ratna’!

In 2002 also a points system was tried out, but mercifully it was discontinued the next year. By that points system also a World athletics championship bronze medal-winning track and field athlete could be edged by a lesser achiever if all the points for lesser meets were to be taken into consideration.

The ‘experts’ who have devised the current points system will have to look at certain simple logic to make it more meaningful. A World Athletics Championships is equivalent in standard to an Olympic Games even if it may not be as prestigious in some countries and is held once every two years. Periodicity of a World Championships does not bring down its grading or toughness.  An annual World Badminton Championships cannot be in any way inferior in status to, say any biennial event. Commonwealth championships in many sports disciplines are substandard. It is better left out in this complicated points system.

2014 points system

S. No.	Event	Medal
		Gold	Silver	Bronze
1	World  Championship/World Cup (once in 4 years)	40	30	20
2	Asian Games	30	25	20
3	Commonwealth Games	25	20	15
4	World Championship/World Cup (biennial/annual)	25	20	15
5	Asian Championship	15	10	7
6	Commonwealth Championship	15	10	7

 (The above points system released by the ministry in January, 2014 might have undergone some changes since then. It is being given here just to focus on the point that a World Championship held annually or once in two years does not rank equivalent to an Asian Games.)