.... the brain is not a vessel to be filled,
It is something to be IGNITED

[Watch the short film on "Sport in India" at: http://blip.tv/file/742238] 

Chandigarh: March 26, 2008:- Why Indian sports' is in such a pathetic condition? Why our athletes can't even get through the heats? Despite being one fifth of the global population why we can't even get five medals in Olympics? To investigate all this and find answer, an independent report prepared by a citizens' group under the initiative of "Mission Zero Tolerance" was released by Hemant Goswami, chairperson of Burning Brain Society at Press Club, Chandigarh today.

The report, supported by a 14 minutes video documentary "The Lost Track – Sports in India" was also released on the occasion. The documentary highlighted the apathy towards sports and the reasons for failure by taking one of the best cities of the country, "Chandigarh" as an example. The "Citizens' report" researched by Nidhi Arora, Dechen Yangdol, Amit Gulati and Hemant Goswami demonstrated that there was a wide gap of availability of resources for the affluent class and the general public. Sharp gender bias was also discovered causing uncomfortable divide between males and females.

"We found that not only was unnecessary barrier created for youngsters to undertake sports and use the existing facilities and stadiums, but there was also large scale bungling, corruption and mismanagement of resources prevalent. Crores are being thrown down the drain by the bureaucracy and then the same people cite lack of resources as a reason for not doing well." Said social activist Hemant Goswami.

The citizen researchers also undertook first-hand investigation to verify the ground realities. Nidhi Arora and Dechen Yangdol informed, "Under our supervision we asked six enthusiastic youngsters from rural background to visit all the stadiums and seek admission. Despite offering the fee and trying their best, we found that not even one got admission in any of the stadium which is otherwise meant for public use. Even when we ourselves tried to seek admission in the cricket and football stadium, we were told that these facilities were not open to females." Adding to this, Amit Gulati revealed, "We found that some stadiums even had up to 10 security guards (employed on contract) to prevent the entry of the general public in the sporting facilities meant for public. This is despite the fact that in the Auditor General (Punjab) report such unmindful and wasteful expenditure has even been objected, but still, the business of wasting public resources continues unabated."

Most of this apathy towards sports was captured on camera and finds its way in the documentary by Burning Brain Society. "We are doing an international release of the documentary through Internet and the documentary is now available on most of the video website. Anybody interested can watch it on "http://burningbrain.org/sportsinindia.htm" or on any video site like Video Google, Blip TV, MSN Video, etc." informed Hemant.

BBS informed that as an initiative under "Mission Zero Tolerance" very soon they shall be exposing many activities of corruption in the sports department. There are incidents where crores appear to have been siphoned by purchasing sports equipment without following the law and at highly exorbitant price. Analysis of the sports department and the spending done in the name of sports will open a "Can of worms." Amit added.

Websites on which the short movie "The Lost Track" has been released: 

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