While almost all the sports infrastructure and sports bodies in J&K State are plagued with multiple levels of problems and corruption, some that were known to have some quality of respect have gone same way. One such sports department is, Kashmir University’s Directorate of Sports and Physical Education.
Gone are the days when the department had only few coaches and some field staff with one Director looking at all the affairs. Today the Directorate is full fledged department and has got number of coaches, assistant directors as well as large contingent of lecturers and field and support staff.
However, compared to the last 13 years, the directorate is these days run by temporary head while as the coaches mostly remain on private or outside State assignments. Today, directorate has got more coaches, more staff, more facilities but level of work is negligible as compared to decade ago.
“There were days when Directorate had few coaches and very less number of staff. But the activities and achievements as compared to current regime were more and far better,” said a known sports administrator.
“Currently Directorate has got coaches in almost every disciplines but most of them remain busy with private assignments while as some remain busy in office politics. There are also some who are mostly interested in earning extra money through teaching assignment for MPed students rather than training their own trainees,” he further said.
Despite the lot of manpower and gradually good equipment, the University hasn’t produced even average results at multiple state level events. Most of its teams returned with any reputable achievement neither this season nor from last many.
This also arises a question on the role of coaches. They do almost nothing for the whole year, which pertinently gets visible in the performances of teams at the national level. With nobody from the authority questioning this all set-up, people at helm are taking their job quite easily, hence making the state’s sports era suffer.
Similarly, the Campus have some beautiful, naturally enriched grounds but perhaps, of no use. They remain inactive for most of the year while for a few activities, the staff fails to deliver. These grounds not only lack infrastructure but are in absolute shambles.