Broken Arrow

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Once upon a time the Arjuna Award was associated with the who’s who of Indian sport. Today, announcement of the award is increasingly accompanied by hows and whys.

Like the person for whom it is named, the award has become more colourful than anyone would have imagined. For a nation with an underachieving sporting record and a handful of real heroes, the annual list of winners is less a roll of honour than the harbinger of a stream of unseemly protests.

The cycle is inevitable: Committee formed, lobbying begun, list finalised, questions raised, noisy press meets staged, losers disgruntled, allegations hurled, change demanded, promises made, peace bought. Till the next year, an uneasy silence. Deciding winners in a nation of sporting mediocrity isn’t easy but does it have to be this hard?

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Every mistake the committee can commit, it commits. Since its institution in 1961 by an idealistic, forward-looking government, the Arjuna Award has been tied up in obsolete procedural shortcomings and a rigid formula-based framework.

A fixed number of winners, a limit of two winners per sport and, in typical government fashion, a timeline out of sync with everyone else. Since the rulebook says that the awards are for last year’s performance (if the rule had to be followed, did no one think of having it in January?), we now have the quirky situation of Olympic silver medalist Major Rajyavardhan Rathore receiving the Arjuna while finalist Anju Bobby George gets the Khel Ratna.

Though this is a minor glitch when one walks down the Arjuna Hall of Fame. Wrestler Khashaba Jadhav, who won India’s first individual Olympic medal at Helsinki in 1952, got the Arjuna in 2001 — 17 years after his death. Milkha Singh rejected the award the same year since he was clubbed with Rachna Govil, a SAI hostel warden with little more than a passing interest in running.

Olympic gold medal winning hockey captain Surjit Singh was named in the Arjuna list 17 years after his moment of glory and more than a decade after he had died. Surjit’s teammate Kaushik’s wait: 19 years (and he received the Arjuna the same year he was up for the Dronacharya!)

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To be fair, shortlisting the 15 each year is a task almost as difficult as qualifying for the award. Besides the pull and push of heavyweight recommendation letters and high-level phone calls, the committee members have to make value judgements on subjective issues. Is a Commonwealth basketball gold medal better than a Asian Games volleyball bronze? Is a junior world champion a ‘‘world champion’’ as defined by the award’s rules? Comparing apples and oranges can leave you with the odd lemon.

That makes the Arjuna Award, like the hero of the Mahabharata, less than perfect.