The Way Forward For Sports Federations

For an aspiring sports nation like India, REGULATING its sport administration is no longer an option. It is, in fact, a priority, writes NANDAN KAMATH.

- Nandan Kamath

The recent few years have seen matters of Indian sport and its governance move from the back pages to the front pages of newspapers, shift from sports segments to prime time news on television and become a regular trending topic on social media. Members of the cast have included a colourful rainbow of individuals— politicians of all hues, businessmen, career sports administrators, sports ministers and, most recently, judges and retired judges of the country’s highest courts. However, athletes and the public have rarely figured in this narrative. It is not difficult to see why.

TRADITIONALLY, sports governance regulation has been positioned as a system of reasonably basic, structural and institutional restrictions on the otherwise free reign of ‘autonomous’ sports regulators. The apparently universal principles of ‘good governance’ of sport have largely been designed by sports bodies for sports bodies — limitations they must suffer and endure so as to enjoy their broad powers and privileges. The norms have included matters such as age and tenure restrictions, conflict of interest and ethics codes. Monitoring of compliance with these is either by the body itself or by other inter-related sports bodies such as regional and international federations. In that sense, extant good governance regulation has tended towards being window-dressing.

In some quarters, and certainly in India, it has been vehemently argued that the ‘autonomy’ of sports federations is to be understood as absolute freedom from external regulation, accountability or control. Any legal or other state intervention is swatted away as inappropriate ‘interference’, be it legislative, administrative or judicial in nature.