October 15, 2015, Thursday. The Sports Authority of India (SAI) administrators assembled for the 72nd meeting of their financial committee in the National Drug Testing Laboratory near their headquarters on Lodhi Road in New Delhi.
The 2016 Summer Olympics was exactly 297 days away.
Among the 30 items on the agenda was the opening of an athletic centre for Siddis at Dandeli in Karwar district of Karnataka. In Haliyal taluk, Dandeli is close to Siddi villages that dot the area. Around 40,000 Siddis live in Uttara Kannada district.
The thought process was quite simple. The athletes in the East African nations, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, were known for their performances, thanks to their genes. In India, the only African ethnic community was the Siddis. It was that gene factor in them that talent scouts were looking at. The proposal to build an athletic centre for the community was not a welfare measure; it was supposed to be a step towards building a sporting country.
Portuguese flavour
According to historical accounts, Siddis were brought to Goa by the Portuguese in the 15th century. They served as soldiers, slaves and traders. After the Portuguese exit, Siddis made the forests in Western Ghats their home. Today, they are mostly confined to the Gir region of Gujarat and Northern Karnataka.
“The Siddis have a genetic advantage that empowers them for excellence in sports, such as athletics,” read the minutes of the SAI meeting. The estimated fund requirement was `1.39 crore, of which half would be borne by the Agricultural Insurance Company of India.
Five months later, on March 10, 2016, the SAI administrators met again for the 73rd meeting of the financial committee. There had been no response on bearing costs from the insurance company.
Months later, in August, India returned with a silver and bronze medal from the Rio Olympics. The conservative haul was four less than the previous outing in London. While some expressed displeasure at the country’s performance, the medallists were hailed, as the popular opinion was that they won in spite of the system and not because of it.
Two years sans coach
Efforts to identify Siddi youth had begun much before an official proposal on opening the athletic centre was discussed by SAI. As a temporary move, 14 children from the villages in Haliyal and Yellapur taluks were selected and lodged at the Loyola Vikas Kendra School in Mundgod two years ago. About 50 km from Hubballi, Mundgod is famous for its Tibetan camp, one of the largest in the country.
Samson Simow Belaunkar, 16, is one of the potential athletes identified by SAI. He was to be trained as an 800 m athlete before SAI decided to withdraw support to him and 12 others. Their reasoning: their performance was not up to the mark. But SAI never provided coaches to train them and had just identified them.
“Two years ago, they came up with the proposal, and we took in 14 students,” Father Johnson Pinto, principal of the school, told The Sunday Standard. The school has Siddi students, and tribal education was among the primary reasons why it was set up, according to Fr Johnson.
This year, Fr Johnson said ‘no’ to SAI officials. “Their intention died a natural death,” he rued. He had told them he was ready to admit more students provided they assigned a sports coach to the school. But the officials have not responded yet.
According to the principal, they can accommodate students, but the school does not have the facility nor the personnel to train them. “Whatever special nutritious food they need as sportspersons, we don’t know anything about it. Each game in athletics requires specific training and follow-up. We don’t have such resources,” he said.
Of the 14 students admitted two years ago, SAI did not consider any fit to continue, except for one. “They (SAI) said the students should have won certificates in the district level,” said Fr Johnson. Of the 13, three left. Some completed Class X, while three had no other option as they could not pay the fees without the SAI help. The rest are still in the school. This year, the school has a zonal individual champion in discus throw. Surprisingly, even Jeevan Siddi, the champion, is not under SAI purview.
The Siddi kids, according to Fr Johnson, have a natural temperament for sports. A native of Udupi, he has been the principal of the school for 14 years and has seen many of the children grow up from close quarters. Four years ago, one of their students, Duming Salu Siddi, reached the national level in high jump. “We gave nil coaching,” Fr Johnson said. When he went to pre-university, the same boy failed to qualify in the district level. “Other boys went for special training, while Dumingo had to depend on his innate ability,” he said.
Samson will complete his Class X next year and move out of the school. He plans to do a course at an Industrial Training Institute in Mangaluru.
When contacted, SAI officials said there would be a fresh round of identification of potential athletes. However, no clear answer was given for their failure to provide coaches to the initially selected students.
Former international athlete Kamala Babu Siddi said the children were handed the wrong end of the stick. “If you keep them in a hostel for two years and don’t give them training, it is not their fault,” Kamala said.
SAG’s sad story
The idea to induce indigenous tribes into sports was part of a grand plan in the late 80s under the Special Area Games (SAG) programme. “Talent scouts are engaged in the biggest and most ambitious exercise ever undertaken in Indian sports,” read a 1988 media report.
Siddis were among the talent group under the radar of the scouts. Some of them created national records in their first athletic meets and represented the country in international events. Kamala was the most prolific of them, representing India in the 1993 South Asian Federation (SAF) Games in Dhaka to win a bronze medal in 100 m hurdles and the World Police and Fire Games in Melbourne the same year to win three golds.
The 41-year-old, now a Chief Superintendent with the South Western Railway, was part of the second batch of the SAG scheme. Kamala is among the lucky few whose life transformed for the better following the scheme. “I probably would not have got past Class V, if not for sports,” Kamala said. Her village, Manchgiri in Yellapur taluk, had facilities only for a primary school, for which she had to undertake a 5 km journey every day.
She was in a hostel for Siddis when scouts from Delhi came looking for children as part of the SAG scheme. Just 12 years old, she got selected to the second batch (1988-89) of Siddi athletes who would receive training. A year later, in her first national athletics meet, she broke the record in pentathlon. “I had no idea about sports. I did what my coaches said. Run, they said. I ran,” she reminisced.
Another national record in heptathlon followed. She landed a job as a constable with the Karnataka Police and represented the force in the World Police and Fire Games in Melbourne. Just as things were going well, the scheme was scrapped in 1995 and the athletes were told to leave. “No one knows why,” she said.
Kamala spoke highly of her coaches—late Ravanan from Tamil Nadu and Purushotham Rai from Karnataka—who were instrumental in identifying and developing the innate skills of the Siddi athletes. “Purushotham sir used to take care of us like our parents did. The coaches were good,” she added.
Nothing remains in the house —photographs or trophies—to show her athletic past. Kamala felt that a respectable life, which she led now, was the greatest trophy that she had earned.
Racism doing the rounds
The official stand of SAI was that the merger of SAG scheme with the SAI training in Bengaluru led to the dilution of the scheme. What they failed to realise was that the dreams of many aspiring athletes were shattered. But under the vague terminology of “dilution of scheme”, there is also the issue of racism that the Siddis faced after their inclusion into sports.
According to Kamala, Siddi athletes have got used to hushed whispers and contempt. Some would spare the subtlety and just let it out, “Where have you got these guys from?” “It does not matter which level— school, zonal, district or national. The initial expression is the same,” Kamala said. “But when they hear us speak Kannada or Hindi, the expression changes to that of shock,” she laughed.
That the Siddis are Indian citizens remains largely unknown, even in Karnataka. When Kamala visits the local market in Hubbali, vendors would speak to her in English. “Accha hai, I am an expat then,” she laughed it off, pointing to the lack of awareness. But, she was quick to point out the discrimination that she and many other Siddis had to face while growing up. Nowadays, armed with education and awareness about rights, people retort.
“For instance, they (upper castes) never allowed us seats in government buses. Then people started questioning if it was their private property. Her daughters, Pratiksha and Nimiksha, learn Bharatanatyam and train to be athletes. Where I grew up, classical dance was taught only to upper caste children,” Kamala said, adding that she wanted to learn singing, but teachers were not ready to take a Siddi child under their tutelage.
Kamala is part of a workers’ union and has learnt to voice her concerns. Lack of awareness about their rights and inability to raise their voices were also reasons why the Siddis could not do anything when the SAG scheme was scrapped.
Work is on to build an athletic centre in Dandeli, but its not at a likeable pace, said Kamala. A year has passed since the panel meeting on the proposal to set up a sports hostel for the Siddis. “Only the plot has been identified. Not a single brick has been laid,” noted a panel member.