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| Arjuna awardees being felicitated during a seminar in Guwahati on Saturday. Picture by Eastern Projections |
Guwahati has become an important destination for hosting national championships. It reflects the apparent love of Assam’s sport administrators to host these meets.
There is nothing wrong with hosting meets. But the same passion is missing when they deal with issues like providing proper training and exposure in order to build champion players.
In fact, they simply disappear after the events.
What is the use of hosting National Games by spending lakhs and lakhs of rupees (now it has even crossed a crore!) to see somebody else running away with the trophy?
If it is a question of providing exposure, why not send the promising players to all-important domestic and even some international events with the money which is spent on hosting a national?
Our sport administrators need to do some serious thinking on this count.
Pulin Sarma,
Dispur
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| Encroachment in the Saralpara area of Kokrajhar |
The news that Assam has the highest area of forestland under encroachment does not seem to have bothered the forest department.
Official figures furnished by the Centre have revealed that Assam has almost 3.5lakh-hectares of forest land under encroachment.
Though government officials say that they are doing everything to stop encroachment, a visit to the forest areas in Golaghat, Kokrajhar, Dhemaji and Sonitpur brings out the true story.
At Sonai Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary in Sonitpur, though the department is trying its best not to let more areas come under encroachment, there is no guarantee that this will not happen in the near future. The officers have to be tough enough not to buckle under political pressure, otherwise the forest area will vanish.
Bhaben Das,
Tezpur
