Issue 29 Vol II, December 15, 2006

F E A T U R E S

The Lost Glory of Hockey

ONCE at the world sports meets hockey was synonymous with India. After partition, the two countries, India and Pakistan fought for hockey laurels. Hockey was just not game like cricket to be played leisurely and where the rich and famous joined. It was peoples’ game; played vigorously on any open space with gusto as it caught the imagination of young generations at the school and college play grounds. A good hockey player was star in educational institutions. But gradually that status got lost largely due to the apathy of politicians, corrupt pack of successive sports officials and the poverty of hockey enthusiasts. Recent at Doha India looked just a bundle of shame and ignominy when it ranked no where among even the first six. Harjap Singh Aujla, a well know engineer from New Jersey is an avid writer and hockey enthusiast. He shares his concerns.

The curtain fell on the prestigious Olympian Surjit Memorial Hockey Tournament on November 15, 2006 in Surjit AstroTurf Stadium Burlton Park Jalandhar. This annual tournament attracts India’s best hockey teams in men’s group. The team of the Punjab and Sindh Bank lifted the trophy with a convincing 2 – 0 win against the cash rich Indian Oil Team in the well contested final match. Although the best strikers of the Indian Oil Team are also Prabhjot Singh and Deepak Thakur from Punjab, but the Punjab and Sindh Bank Team consists almost entirely of the players from Punjab. This goes to prove that Punjab is still the nursery of hockey in India.

The flag bearer team of Punjab used to be the Punjab Police Team. But for the past four years its performance has gone down due to non-recruitment of sportsmen. This has certainly hurt the pride of the Punjabis. But the Punjab and Sindh Bank and the Punjab National Bank among others have been courting the best hockey players that Punjab is still churning out. Although players hailing from Punjab are doing very well in domestic tournaments, the complexion of the national team does not reflect this. It appears that the Indian Hockey Federation has shut its eyes and ears to what is happening in India. This is very unfortunate.

The Indian Hockey Federation after debacle is planning to hold the Premier Hockey League in two legs to be held in Chennai and Chandigarh. It will have teams from New Delhi, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Orissa, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai. There will be three top notch foreign players in each team. Prudent judgment indicates that the induction of top ranking foreign players will be counter productive. The moves made by the foreign players and the goals scored by them will obscure the performance of the indigenous. The purpose of this league should be to pin point the best talent available in the country. The presence of foreign players will not less this happen. I have a simple question, “Will these foreign players be available to the Indian team playing in international tournaments?” I do not understand as to why the Indian Hockey Federation is hell bent on squandering the scare financial resources at its disposal. There is one Mohammad Tughlaq there who can afford to make such blunders.

In October 2006 National Hockey Championship for the famous Rangaswamy Cup was conducted in Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Bhaini Sahib (near Ludhiana). This important tournament made several interesting revelations. The semifinals and the final were played on the Astroturf of Surjit Memorial Hockey Stadium inside the Burlton Park in Jalandhar. Most of the players who figured in the semi-final and final were the products of Punjab.

The Punjab Team, which traditionally consists of the players of the Punjab Armed Police Team, did not do too well. They were defeated in the preliminaries by Punjab’s own lesser known but a good team, the Namdhari Hockey Eleven.

In fact the Namdharis proved to be the dark horse of the tournament. They conquered even the much highly rated and financially the richest Indian Airlines team. It is painful that the tournament was held in Punjab and the home team did not do too well. The reason lies with the government. The PAP, over the last four years, was not given a free hand to recruit top quality hockey players at ranks appropriate to their caliber in their field. The players recruited during the earlier years are aging and new blood is not being injected. Therefore at best this team could be branded as a stale team. The Punjab team’s lackluster performance pained the heart of every lover of Punjab hockey.

The meteoric rise of the Namdharis was the only silver lining amidst dark clouds spread over Indian hockey. Based in a small village called Bhaini Sahib on the Ludhiana Chandigarh Highway, the Namdharis have proven sheer numbers do not count.

What over a billion underfed Indian populations cannot accomplish, a small well fed and properly coached village population can achieve. New Zealand has a population of only four million, equal to the combined population of Ludhiana and Amritsar, and as a nation it does win a lot more Olympic medals than a billion Indians can.

The line-up of four teams playing in the semifinals made the Punjabis happy. Out of four teams, three had players recruited almost exclusively from Punjab. The second team the Punjab and Sindh Bank Eleven was recruited entirely from Punjab. The third team although was known as the Delhi Team, but all its players were from the Punjab National Bank Hockey Team and they were 80% recruited from Punjab. The fourth team was of the Indian Oil Corporation had its best players like Prabhjot Singh and Deepak Thakur are the product of  the playing fields of Punjab. Overall it can be said that 75% of the players, who figured in the semi-finals, were from the Punjab. The final was played between the teams of Punjab and Sindh Bank and the Indian Oil Corporation. Those who played in the final were 70% from Punjab. The winner was the Punjab and Sindh Bank Team, all from Punjab.

This goes to prove that Punjab is still the nursery of hockey in India, but it always gets a raw deal at the hands of the Indian Hockey Federation. Mr. Gill had to admit that Punjab plays a big role on the Indian hockey scene and its every district deserves an Astroturf. But he has not been able office do really much either for Punjab or for hockey.

Once an unchallenged super power in world hockey, India in recent decades has seen fall from grace. Let us have a glance at the rise and fall of hockey in India. The British rulers of colonial India introduced hockey in this country almost a century ago. Our unexpected supremacy in the game, at a time when this game was in its infancy in the country, had its first worldwide exposure in Amsterdam, Holland in 1928. India in our maiden Olympic appearance managed to win the Hockey Gold medal and that too with a bang. We ruthlessly crushed every bit of opposition that came in our way.

Since then India did not look back and from 1928 to 1956, we were indeed the undisputed leaders of the World in men’s field hockey. We can not analyze the causes of the fall of Indian Hockey without going into the reasons of our rise. Chronologically the first players of hockey in India were the British. The early inheritors of this fascinating game were the Anglo-Indians. Afterwards this game became a really national game and all ethnic communities started playing it.

For a proper analysis of the rise and fall of Indian Hockey, I am dividing the history of Indian Hockey into three distinct periods. The first was from 1925 to 1947. The second being between 1947 and 1964 and the third period is the current one from 1968 to the present times.

The make up of our pre-1947 teams consisted of four distinct ethnic groups. The first group consisted of crossbred Anglo-Indians. Most of them had British fathers and Indian mothers. They were mostly tall, broad-shouldered, highly muscular, large wristed, speedy and full of stamina hockets at par with the Europeans.

The second significant group to contribute to the success of Indian hockey consisted of the tall and burly milk drinking and meat eating Sikhs from the then affluent central districts of pre-partition Punjab. This area primarily consisted of Lahore Division which included the districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Lahore, Sialkot, Sheikhupura and Gujjranwala. The districts of Jalandhar and Ferozepore of Jalandhar Division also contributed a good share of the best hockets. Other important contributing districts included Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) and Montgomery (now Sahiwal) districts of the then Multan Division.

As a salute to the exemplary bravery exhibited by the Sikh soldiers in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the British rulers allotted large chunks of virgin forested lands to the erstwhile Sikh soldiers. They built canals for irrigation of these lands. This new agricultural area earmarked for the Sikh ex-servicemen was re-named as the districts of Lyallpur and Montgomery. The Sikhs in return not only produced record crops of wheat and cotton, but they also contributed the finest athletes and the best hockets for the Indian teams.

The third major ethnic group consisted of the beef eating muscular Muslims from the central districts of the pre-1947 Punjab. Most of the best Muslims hockey players hailed from the Lahore Division of Punjab. They were strong and speedy and their skills were tailor made for hockey.

The fourth ethnic group comprised of the land owning well to do Hindus of the Hindi heartland, the likes of Dhyan Chand and Roop Singh.

After independence, the exodus of the Anglo-Indians to Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand also took place and India became deprived of their sporting talents also. This way Indian Hockey became handicapped in being denied the services of two important ethnic groups, namely the Punjabi Muslims and the Anglo-Indians. The remaining two groups, the Sikhs and the Hindus of the Indo-Gangetic plains did reasonably well up to 1964. Some Muslims from Bhopal and elsewhere also contributed their might to the Indian Hockey team.

After 1964, the standard of physical fitness of the Europeans teams, due to more health consciousness, started improving markedly. In most disciplines of sports, the Europeans were competing against the Americans, who are traditionally very fit. India, especially its sports governing bodies, unfortunately did not pay any particular attention to improving the level of physical fitness of its players.

As long as hockey was played on grass, India did much better. The grassy fields, when compared to the modern day astroturfs, are quite slow. The grass in India, during the non-monsoon months, does not grow as fast as it does in colder and wetter climates of Europe. Cutting and maintenance of grass is very expensive in Europe. Since World hockey is administratively dominated by the European nations, they opted for synthetic grass like surfaces, which were very expensive to build in India. That is reason as to why, in the number of astroturfs, there is no comparison between the European countries and India. It is the more the merrier for the Europeans.

After 1966, the leadership of Indian Hockey Federation shifted from its traditional base in Punjab to the South. This change did not help the fortune of our team. Rather the performance of the team went down with every big tournament. During the early 1990s, KPS Gill, the then Director General of Punjab Police, took the presidency of the Indian Hockey Federation, but de-facto even Mr. Gill was merely a figurehead. The real man behind the gun is Jyoti Kumarran, the Secretary General of Indian Hockey Federation. Even the so called selection committee of the Indian Hockey Federation is utterly powerless.

Punjab is also not blameless. It is not a poor state anymore, it can do a lot. Punjab was inherently capable of producing World class hockets, but it did not make serious efforts to produce the kind of players it used to churn out prior to 1966. Coaching is of course vital, but what matters most these days is the physical strength and fitness.

I think, on its own the affairs of the Indian Hockey Federation are not going to improve. It is about time that the Government of India, at the level of the Union Ministry of Sports and Youth Services, should interject into the affairs of the politics ridden Indian Hockey Federation and introduce transparency professionalism and planning into to the management of Indian Hockey.

[Harjap Singh Aujla, 16 Junction Pond Lane, Monmouth Junction, New Jersey 08852, U.S.A. harjapaujla@gmail.com]

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Regional Economics: Conceptual Problems
Vinod Anand

Regional imbalances bog each country. There is nothing new about inter-regional and inter-state variations in terms of economic and social issues. There are ‘declining areas’ or ‘special areas’ within the frontiers of each country. These typical areas qualify for special government assistance to uplift them from stagnation results from local unemployment, industrial imbalance, declining industries, over-population, and a variety of other economic and social ‘pulling’ factors. The problem is highly alarming in developing countries most of which suffer from acute and lasting differences in prosperity between geographical regions. This phenomenon of regional income differentials is termed as ‘regional dualism’ or in American terminology as ‘North-South problem’. India is no exception to this. The time series data set on various economic and social indices surely supports the hypothesis of regional imbalances in the country.

Such regional imbalances fall within the domain of what we term as ‘Regional Economics’. In order to emphasize its inter disciplinary nature it is also sometimes called ‘Regional Analysis’, and also ‘Regional Science’. Apart from economics, it also heavily draws on demography, history, geography, sociology and other disciplines.

The foremost problems of regional economics are concerned with (a) classifying regions, (b) measuring the inter-regional differences in prosperity/poverty, and (c) pulling, through economic and other measures, the declining areas so that are bestowed with equitable and balanced distribution of national prosperity and well being.

This brief paper focuses on the first two problems and offers a few solutions on the basis of what is available in the existing literature.

Let us first look at the first problem, which refers to identifying or defining ‘regions’. Three different approaches are available. The first  approach considers ‘homogeneity’ of regions with respect to either economic, social, geographic or other features, or their combinations. The homogeneity can also be in terms of statistical compilations. The second approach is that of ‘polarization’ and defines regions on the basis of their being linked (in certain ways through say, trade, government help) with some central urban place. The third approach is concerned with ‘administrative coherence’ and classifies regions on the basis of their identity with say, the available leadership. In real practice, it is the combination of these three approaches, which ultimately defines a ‘region’. But no matter what we do to classify regions we are always beset with the serious difficulty of availability and limitations of the required data. As the ‘homogeneity’ criterion is the most powerful and useful, many studies have been undertaken to define some indices to measure the degree of homogeneity when many of its variants exist.

Once regions have been marked, the next problem refers to the measurement of the regional income differentials. There is sufficient theoretical support in economic literature, and abundant experience of the developing countries to show that as economic development takes place absolute differentials between the rich and the poor regions not only persist but increase due to a number of equilibrating effects generated by labour and capital migration from poor regions to the rich regions; a biased government policy in favour of already grown areas; and slow inter-regional linkages.

There are quite a few indices that are used to measure regional inequality. One such index is income per head of the population. Another index is the degree of unemployment in the labour force. This is essentially used in developing countries where income differentials are marginal. Related with this index is the index that gives the activity rate in terms of the percentage of population of working age in the total population. Sometimes, we also employ the rate of net migration of population out of a region, and the rate of growth of income per head to measure inter-regional disparities.

For obvious reasons, all these indices have to be in terms of relative differentials rather than absolute differentials. For example, if the index is income per head of the population we work out this index for each region/area as a percentage of the national income per head.

To what extent this methodology is used in India to measure regional imbalances are not very transparent. It is quite often that the methodology is statistically viable, but the data on which it is based is highly ‘fabricated’ to support the politically motivated policies of the ‘government sector’, which is a synonym in India for the so-called ‘political sector’!

[The author is  a Professor of Economics at the National University of Lesotho in Southern Africa]

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Culture and Health Care Attract Tourists - II
L.K.Verma

THERE are young and new entrepreneurs, some even with degrees from well established foreign universities who are pp promoting tourism. They have turned it into a successful business ventures.

Young Abhay Jagat after his graduation in computers and management degree from Australia could have been successful in soft ware development, yet he chose to setup Whistling Willows much against solicited or unsolicited advice. He has tasted sweet success and many have followed up. He has established a classic restaurant in the up market of Chandigarh and has plans to go for more ethnic resorts.

To showcase Punjab’s cultural heritage, Gurshi Aulakh and her former cop husband, Mr. M.P.S Aulakh have made an attempt to showcase Punjab’s rural charm blend with modern day comforts at Vaseela, their farm-turned-resort at Village Nadiali on the Zirakpur-Patiala road. It took nearly three-years for the couple to plan their venture aimed at attracting people from not only from the region, but those from abroad. Punjabis often  take their guests from overseas to make it a point enjoy the cultural heritage. A harmony of the old and the modern, Vaseela gives a true feel of a Punjabi village setup along with a display of Gurshi Aulhak’s collections of rural artefacts. Open for small get together, preferably with prior bookings, Vaseela offers delicious traditional and multi-cuisine meals. Vaseela would soon bring folk artists and performers to give live shows to promote Punjabi art and culture, says Gurshi Aulakh.

Country’s first private forest reserve has come up in the foothills of the Shivaliks in the form of Kikar Lodge. Situated, about 70 kilometers from Chandigarh, Kikar Lodge is an attempt to promote “Environment Tourism” by a hotel management graduate, Amarinder Singh. The place provides ample opportunity to bird lovers and nature worshipers to explore the wild. It offers a 35-kilometer jungle trail, night safari, quad biking, open air swimming, tented accommodation, camp fires, etc. Kikar Lodge has been attracting people from far and wide for its 100-acre organic plantations, 170 varieties of trees, wild like that abounds with beer, wild boar, jackal and rare species of birds.

London based travel company, Raptor, has tied up with Kikar Lodge to promote this place as a ‘Environment Tourism” destination. ITC Group has given Kikar Lodge a Welcome Heritage Label says a proud Amarinder Singh.

Amritsar’s Green Avenue based ‘Divine Destination’ is quietly promoting ‘Religious Tourism’. Gunbir Singh and his wife Kirandeep Kaur say, “Divine Destination aims at creating for the varied traveller exciting and comprehensive tour programs to destinations in the region and across the country. Divine Destination offers several pre-planned journey or a tailor-made trip to suit individual requirements.

The family of those managing ‘Divine Destination’ has their roots in Peshawar. Traditionally dry fruit merchants, our ancestors used to reverse the Silk Route through the Khyber Pass into the Indian sub-continent with their merchandise. Later they diversified into weaving exotic woolen fabrics. We have a history of avid travel built into our genes, says Mr. Gunbir Singh.

Specialising in tours of Amritsar, Divine Destinations undertakes tours of the Harimandir Darshan in a totally different manner. “It’s a full-day tour of the Golden Temple beginning at the “Ambrosial hour” (4 am) for the Asa-di-Var (morning service), culminating in the Chaupai Sahib (evening service) and the Palki Sahib Darshan. We make the visitors submerge in a holistic experience of “Miri and Piri” (Akal Takht and Harimandir), besides taking them to pay obeisance at Baba Atal and Guru ke Mahal, make them meditate with Gurbani and Kirtan, participate in the rich tradition of langar and visit the Sikh museum”, says Mrs. Kirandeep Kaur. This tour is especially popular with NRI Sikhs who want an insight into their religious heritage.

Another tour named ‘Kat Churasi’ is a full day experience of travel to Gurudwaras around Amritsar. Commencing with Goindwal Sahib, (where legend has it that “Moksha” from the 84 rebirths can be attained and where the tradition of langar was begun), onto Khadoor Sahib, (where Guru Angad Dev Ji stopped the ancient practice of Sati), Jhulna Mahal (shaking wall) Gurudwara, Taran Sahib (the historic Gurudwara created by Guru Arjan Dev Ji), Ababa (where Bhai Marana found his rabbi on Guru Nanak Sahibs instructions), Gurudwara Birr Baba Buddha (where Guru Arjan Dev Ji's wife Ganga Devi was granted the boon of bearing a son).

Divine Destination’s “Spice Tour” takes you for a rickshaw ride through the aromatic bazaars (markets) of the walled city of Amritsar. It lets you savour the sights and fragrances of Majith Mandi, Guru Bazaar and the Loon Mandi, while viewing the heritage buildings of Amritsar. Enroute you stop for a dhabba meal of traditional Punjabi food. The tour guide helps you in shopping too. Amritsar offers variety of shawls, stoles, capes, blankets, jewellery besides carpets. After an organised lunch at a Garden Cafe the tour ends with a relaxed Tonga ride  through Ram Bagh Gardens (summer palace of Maharaja Ranjit Singh), says Gunbir Singh.

Soon Himachal Pradesh will be able to boost of housing a Ski resort in Manali. The resort built  with the largest ever foreign direct investment in any tourism project in the country will be ready over the next three years and will go a long way in promoting ‘Adventure Tourism’ in the country. Touted as India’s first-ever international level Ski resort, it is being promoted by American billionaire Alfred Ford, a great grandson of American car baron Henry Ford.

Patterned on world-famous winter resorts like Aspen in the US, St Mortiz in Swiss Alps and Innsbruck in Austria, the resort christened 'The Fort', when ready, could provide India with an opportunity to bid for Winter Olympics. Once in place, the 50 acres resort will have a five-star hotel, 300 villas, 150 condos, shops, restaurants and spa. Besides skiing, winter sports, summer adventure, the options on offer at the resort would include cross-country trails, ice skating, sledding, Yak sleigh rides and the inevitable entertainment and culture fests.

“Everything is interlinked. Any foreigner who travels for any reason helps the economy and the local population indirectly. Cities like Ludhiana which had only business travellers are seeing tourists for other reasons. Ninety per cent of my foreign patients visit the Golden Temple. The service providers (clinics, hotels, Taxi services etc) are becoming more professional. Yet  the serious  problem is the lack of direct air link. If that happens than be prepared to see an exponential growth of tourists in this region.

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