The new minister for youth affairs and sports Ajay Maken has his task cut out when it comes to cleaning up the common wealth games mess. Maken speaks to Nistula Hebbar on his plans for the ministry and the state of student politics in India.
What is your first priority as you take on your new charge?
The first thing that I have done is try and shift some of the focus back on youth affairs rather than just sports. I have divided the country into four zones, one is the zone of Naxal-affected tribal areas, the second is the north eastern states, the third zone is Jammu and Kashmir and the fourth is rest of India. In all these zones, we will try and engage the youth through sports and set up units for manufacturing sports equipment. We also intend to identify certain sports to which certain areas of the country are naturally disposed and launch training programmes. I firmly believe it is only when the youth are not constructively engaged that they gravitate towards insurgency. I have planned an interaction with youth ministers of north eastern states, moderated by Ficci, to come up with a north east specific plan.
After a series of not so youthful ministers for sports and youth affairs, you have been appointed to this job. How will you be different.
I am determined to use this opportunity to affect the lives of our biggest demographic group, which is the youth. My age, unfortunately in politics it is a little stretchable, will hopefully be an advantage to me.
BCCI has asked for some exemptions in excise duty on import of sports equipment. What is the status of that?
We are meeting BCCI officials next week. We are keen to work this out since the BCCI is the most generous contributor to the national sports development fund. Out of a total of Rs 70.8 crore in the fund, we found that Rs 50 crore had been donated by the BCCI alone. The national sports development fund will be used extensively for the preparations for the London Olympics.
You have been the president of the Delhi University Students Union on an NSUI plank. What do you have to say about the general retreat of the NSUI in university elections this year.
Elections in the university are not indicative of what the youth think of the parent party. In fact all parties, like the Congress, the BJP and the CPI(M) have kept their party names out of the names of their student bodies. I believe we need to work on the organisational structure of the NSUI, which is being done.
Do you agree with your predecessor MS Gill on keeping politicians out of sports administration and a limited tenure?
Gill?s recommendations are actually quite good. I will review them soon. We are also reviewing the working of the ministry and bodies like the Nehru Yuvak Kendra Sanghathanwith a fine tooth comb. For example we found that crores of rupees were set aside in the NYKS just to find out every year which were the top five sports being played in each district. Now how can you necessitate the survey?