Be a sport, Gill tells Bollywood stars

Sports Minister MS Gill urges Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to sponsor a team or a player and inspire Indian sports as he did in his film Chak De India. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 12, 2008, 03:03:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Sports Minister MS Gill wants to link Bollywood with sports, which he feels will improve India’s performance at the international arena. He has urged stars to sponsor outstanding sportsperson so that financial resources are not a constraint in their performance.

Speaking to HT, Gill asked Shah Rukh Khan to sponsor a team or a player and inspire Indian sports as he did in his film Chak De India.

“He can begin with sponsoring four women athletes of the Indian relay team. Only Rs 5-10 lakh would be required. I think he can spare that much money for Indian sports.”

The minister said Shah Rukh bought a cricket team at the IPL — the Kolkata Knightriders for a staggering $75.09 million — and though it’s a commercial venture, the star can give something back to the country by sponsoring needy sportsperson.

Gill has specific players for Shah Rukh; for other stars, like Hrithik Roshan, he said they could pick any player to sponsor. “Except cricket or may be tennis, there is no money in any other sports. If Bollywood joins hands with us, the future of other sports would be bright,” he said.

The minister admitted that Indian sportspersons, except those in cricket, don’t get adequate facilities and have to struggle for resources. If the money comes from Bollywood stars, for whom supporting few sportspersons would not be a big deal, the financial crunch can be resolved to some extent.

“It can do to other sports what glamour has done to cricket.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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