How women hockey players’ protest began

BANGALORE: It was at the national women’s hockey camp in Bhopal a few days back that the team came to know about goalkeeper E Rajini’s plight.

A newspaper report highlighting her father’s kidney ailment had them rally round Rajini and raise Rs 20,000 for his surgery. A carpenter with an income of around Rs 3,000-5,000 a month, Rajini’s father was in no position to meet the costs of treatment and surgery. Neither could anyone in her family – her distraught mother or her three siblings.

Still pursuing her commerce degree and with nobody to help, Rajini broke down before her teammates. “She told us that she had been informed about the ailment only a month back. Her family had hidden it from her for many months. She desperately needed money for surgery but no one, including her relatives, helped her,” a player told TOI. The men’s team had been handed over cheques by Hockey India (HI) after Rs 1 crore came from Sahara but the women were told there was not enough money for their achievements – winning the Champions Challenge-II and making the final of Asia Cup last year.

“We immediately collected Rs 20,000 for Rajini’s father’s treatment. That set us thinking: Why are we still playing hockey if it does not reward us for bringing glory to the nation? That’s how the protest began.”

Rajini’s plight also gave the senior players the idea of opening a joint account in a Bhopal bank. Some people even called them greedy but a steady trickle since last week has seen the balance rise to Rs 3,09,000, including the Rs 2 lakh which the girls received from Yash Raj Films, producers of Chak de India.

Rajini is just one example of girls from the lowest strata of society dreaming of making it big in hockey. Beginning with state and Sports Authority of India (SAI) sports hostels, they effectively combine their academic and sporting careers in the hope that it will land them a berth in the national team and a job.

Seniors such as Mamta Kharb, Surinder Kaur, Saba Anjum and Binita Toppo, to name a few, may have battled adverse circumstances as they rose in stature but jobs have not always lifted the players from poverty and deprivation – low salaries and typical family demands leaving them with little to deal with emergencies.

In effect, the black armband protest, the demand for incentives and parity with men is essentially a distress signal from a team at its wit’s end.
It is also a telling message to every Indian who thinks that sports begins and ends in that quadrangle called playfield: there is definitely life after the final whistle which demands a steady flow of money. This is the truth that officials have refused to acknowledge.

The examples of Sandeep Kaur and Rani Rampal will make things even clearer. Both the girls are in standard 12. Sandeep’s father is a mechanic and depends on daily wages to make ends meet. He is suffering from a lung disease and that naturally means further pressure on his financial resources. Rani’s father is a cart-puller who runs his family with the few rupees that he earns every day. Both the girls are unemployed.

“For girls such as Rani and Sandeep, money is of utmost importance. What is the point in clearing their dues at a later date or creating a fund to develop the game when they need the funds now?” asks goalkeeper Dipika Murthy, referring to the ministry’s decision to form a corpus for the game from the money received from various sources.

There are more in the camp living in the hope that they will be given immediate financial relief. Each one of them is a high achiever on the field but racked by crippling poverty outside it.

Will they get their due in the long run?