Pre-mature death of Kunti’s turf; officials watch it being eaten away and looted

s2h Special

The turf has not even been laid, but already the question of its utility and safety are being raised. And, definitely those were not without any reasons.

It is a great idea to have turf in Kunti which in the past produced players of caliber in Gopal Bengra, of 1978 World Cup fame, but due to utter lack of fore-thought and planning the noble objective is lost, the work almost a non starter even after crore of public money have already been spent.

The local government’s sports wing, and National Projects Construction Corporation are jointly implementing a scheme by which three turfs are laid in the state of Jharkhand. That they thought of one at Kunti is a great development plan. Kunti is a hockey hub in the hockey-conscious Jharkhand state – at least six gold medalists of Manchester Commonwealth Games are from this state. Tribals in particular aim career in sports, most of the hockey talents land in Army or Railways, who still recruit hockey players.

The project has been sanctioned two years ago. A Netherlands based company has sent the turf three months ago. With that the laying of the turf started. However, there are no compound walls or fence around the playing ground on which the turf is being laid.

As a result, stray animals enter and spoil the portion of the turf – perhaps they thought grass is for cows!

Its not just animals are spoiling the show. Locals also devised way of using it, rather in their own way. They started cutting the turf and took away those portions home! What purpose will it serve is not known — perhaps green carpet to receive guests — but the fact of the matter is by now at least one third of the fresh turf is lost to such thieves.

It was painful to see the visuals on the other day.

Without security personnel and fence barrier, the costly turf – estimated to be around 2.5 crores – is being lost to both human and husbandary stocks.

It is really pathetic how the government agencies could be so casual and we don’t know what happened to great Indian babudom who boasts of taking care of every aspect of planning and execution.

Nishant Chaturvedi writes exclusive for stick2hockey.com