A hamlet faced with a dilemma

It is a hockey-mad town. Hardly surprising, considering that this small pocket of less than half a lakh people in Haryana’s Kurukshetra district has produced over 30 international hockey players for India, especially women hockey players. For every poor and not-so-poor household in Shahbad, hockey is the way out of privation and anonymity.

With almost every household having a daughter or two in hockey, the sexual harassment scandal at the national level has become a gnawing, unspoken worry plaguing the families. Yet, there’s reluctance to talk about it. “When my daughter wanted to play hockey, I was the first to resist, fearing what people in our community would say to a jawaan ladki going out to play hockey. And indeed there was resistance in the community. But once she started doing well, everyone enthusiastically supported her. Such scandals can make it difficult for the girls. It will impact the game,” says Roshni Saini, mother of the former vice-captain of the Indian women’s hockey team, Suman Bala, who is currently in Ireland training to be a coach.

Suman and Surinder Kaur, the current captain of the team, were among the first batch of girls to take to hockey in Shahbad. Surinder’s brother, Harilal, also admits that he was initially reluctant to let Surinder play. Today, his 15-year-old daughter, Balwinder, is training at the same institute that Suman trained in and he is extremely proud that she is following in her aunt’s footsteps.

“Sikh girls were so conservative that they would not even take off their chunni, let alone wear skirts to play hockey. I had to persuade and convince their parents to let them play. It was not easy. But today, the result is there for everyone to see and all families here now want their daughters to play hockey,” says proud coach Baldev Singh, who runs the Shahbad Hockey Institute, famous for producing a string of international level players.

Shahbad’s hockey success hinges on one person – Baldev Singh. Community leaders of Shahbad, who have played an active role in encouraging hockey, are split over whether it is a good thing, this one-person dominance. Some praise the coach for his “strict ways which alone have made so many international level athletes possible” . The detractors make dire predictions about it being a recipe for disaster if one person holds sway over the future of so many young girls. “We want a woman coach at the institute and more transparency in its running to prevent any similar scandal,” says one of them. Singh himself endorses the need for more women coaches.

“Suman is training abroad to be a coach. It would be wonderful if she would take over from me. I am retiring in a couple of months when my two-year extension comes to an end,” says Baldev Singh.

For the coaches at the institute, including Singh, there are bigger worries like ensuring employment for senior national-level players. “These are girls from very poor families. Their families send them to play hockey in the hope that they will get government jobs. That’s the least the government can do. But the Railways alone give them jobs. Male hockey players get jobs in the Railways, ONGC, Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum, Customs and Excise, paramilitary forces and various state police organisations. Why can’t these organisations employ our women hockey players? Why the discrimination?” asks Gurvinder Singh, one of the coaches at the Shahbad institute.

With little help from the hockey federation, the institute struggles to give the best possible hockey training to girls for whom it is the only ticket out of lives of drudgery. But it could do with a little more help from the government.