1. What is your take on the state of Sports Affairs in Nagaland State?
My general perception about sports affairs is that there is no sports policy or set goals put forth in the State and without having any clear cut agenda on how sports policies should be structured, I don’t foresee much changes in the State. As of now, it’s only the individual athletes that are striving to achieve certain goals with their career but without any infrastructure or facilities to support the athletes, less than 5 percent make it to a certain level.
2. As an NPL administrator, what are the problems you face? Does the Government fund the NPL, and is that sufficient?
As a grassroots level league, there are many teething problems as well as major ones but for me, it is the infrastructure issue. The State does not even possess a proper football dedicated ground. As mentioned above, it has to start with sports policies and set five year programs.
Yes, the Government, especially the Department of Youth Resources and Sports, give their full support with whatever they can and without the Government’s support; this could not have been possible.
3. It has been suggested in the past that the NPL lacks ‘clear policy’ regarding transfers windows and season schedule. What is your take on that? Is the NPL struggling?
The policies we set are not perfect because we have to understand that we are building this from the ground up and certain policies will work, certain will not. So we have to constantly change and evolve. However regarding transfers windows, its policies are set by All India Football Federation (AIFF) and the State football governing body which is the Nagaland Football Association (NFA). They give directives to all clubs and management, so it is up to the coaches and the technical managers of all clubs to know and follow them.
We do a lot of deliberation on working out our schedules so that they fit properly within a sporting calendar year and it is done in consultation with NFA. Till we find a perfect module, changes will be made.
However Is NPL struggling? - No. Is NPL having problems? - Yes, because, as mentioned earlier, this is a league which is being built from scratch. It has to be given time to evolve and develop, make changes overall and bring in change too. When NPL first started, it was the first ever proper state league in India and possibly the only one of such in India at that time. A lot of credit has to be given to the NFA for playing a major role in creating NPL because we all understood the difficulties that we would be facing overall. And these were all 360 degrees of inferential problems starting from policies to infrastructure to the youngest footballer on the pitch.
4. Is the Government of Nagaland sufficiently supporting sports? If not, what steps do you recommend?
I think the Government is doing what it can possibly do but then again it goes back to the first point I mentioned which is ‘Sports policies’ like a proper 5 year sporting program plans. For example, the multi-crore stadium projects in Dimapur which is still under construction will go to waste in my opinion or not fulfill its purpose if we don’t have proper sporting programs. So we cannot say that the Government is not sufficiently supporting us, but can it do more? I believe it can, especially with sporting programs and policies.
Apart from this, in my opinion, we should do away with appointing diplomats or a head of a department to run specific associations.
Source: Morung Express
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