By D N Singh
‘Mera Bharat mahaan’ or Beti Bachao, Beti padhao’ slogans are to remain contents for the posters after a few years if the excesses committed on the modesty of women athletes get a side glance by the government of the day.
If that continues then they may not volunteer to take sports as a career and a mission in the times to come.
Then who will bring us glory and Olympic medals? Is a big question that should agitate the minds of the guardians of the sports.
Looking back what happened that in 2012, out of six Olympic medals, two were won by women. In 2016, we got just two medals, both won by women, and in 2020, out of seven medals, three came from women. But why would India’s women want to give up sports?
2010 – Members of our Women’s Hockey team accuse the chief coach of sexual harassment.
2014 – A gymnastics coach, booked for allegedly sexually harassing a female gymnast during a national camp.
2015– Four women athletes consume poison at a sports hostel in Kerala. One of them, just 15, dies. They were being harassed by their coaches and seniors.
2021– Eight women accuse an athletics coach in Chennai of sexual abuse over several years.
2022– India’s chief cycling coach sacked after a woman cyclist accused him of inappropriate behaviour while training abroad. In fact, an Indian Express report says that 45 cases of sexual harassment were reported across 24 training centres of the Sports Authority of India between 2011 and 2021.
The predation did not stop at that. En number of cases were reported subsequently. And many more remain unreported due to cohesion. Not naming her, this athlete is invariably very young, often from a village or a small town, where she would have shone in a sport despite no infrastructure, despite social pressures, and financial constraints.
From the word go, their career travels through a male dominated system where there are always black sheeps who take advantage of her many requirements. There comes the pressure on women who passes through torrid phases of harassments in different ways used as baits.
Because of all this, when a sexual predator strikes, a young athlete does fear that if she makes an accusation, she won’t be heard by the sports authorities. And that even her family, instead of supporting her, may tell her to pack her kitbags and come home. And that’s why several survivors choose silence, either for the sake of their careers or to protect their ‘family honour’.
Brij Bhushan Singh, the Wrestling Federation of India chief despite multiple grave charges of sexual assault, the larger system also tends to favour a powerful male accused.
FIRs are delayed by months, and gather dust and the mandatory arrests are not made, oversight committee reports are not made public, and even the moral pressure to step down from that post of authority is not applied to the accused. Because he belongs to a powerful political party where other odds are taken as morals.
How can we say Beti Padhao, Beti bachao’ which sounds shrill and vacuous.
