Indian hockey in total mess - bad timing!

The Indian national sport, Hockey, has been hogging the limelight for all the bad reasons recently! Starting with the revolt by the men's hockey team then the media attention on the pathetic state of administration and now the plight of the women's hockey team. It seems like the worst time for Indian hockey even when the world cup is around the corner.
Hockey has lost the favor from the Indian fans in a major way and the organizers are well aware of this. The turnout is a big big concern and with all these controversies lined up there does not seem to be much good happening to Indian hockey at all.
The media attention is there on hockey in a big way but for all wrong reasons. Each day every other newspaper is doing stories about the pathetic state of Indian hockey and the players. A bleeding father supporting his daughter who represents her country in the national sport is something beyond imagination and yet is the stark reality!!!
To top it all up we have the irony of the highest order - borrowing cricket stars to pitch for hockey! The Virendra Sehwag ads shouting for hockey are all over television. A good intent but the way he begs for everyone to cheer for our national team and get involved in the event on the whole, is a little miserable and shows how desperate the whole Indian hockey situation is! Good luck to Indian hockey!

Tracking the newspapers these days, I believe the major share of it goes to articles related to Aarushi murder case, IPL( still articles on front pages, thanks to Mohammed Asif, the editorials, and obviously the sport section; and I believe it will have its presence till the fad dies off), the oil prices, and loads of blah..
But there were two articles which I made me think a little. First was an appeal to all youngsters to "focus on their studies as well, particularly on spoken English as it would help them getting better jobs if they do not turn into good cricketers. Sehwag in his initial days faced a lot of difficulty in speaking English while he interacted with the anchor person after winning Man-of-the-Match awards. But later he practised quite a bit and now able to speak fluent English though making some grave grammatical mistakes here and there."
Think about it, I realised how relevant and important this statement is. Come to think of it, imagine so many children venture out in an effort to become Sachin Tendulkar, and be tagged "Men in blue", but how many of them finally make into Team India, a handful of them; so what happens others? Some manage to make it to the State teams and play Ranji and continue their effort to impress the selectors, but other who lose this battle fall apart. People who have a decent educational background manage to find jobs and come to the main stream but people who have even sacrificed their education for the sake of a career in cricket, are left no where.
An extreme case, I remember a year back, Subhas Dixit (former under-19 captain) committed suicide by jumping over a high rise near the Green Park Cricket stadium (the place where he might have dreamt of playing wearing the national jersey) in Kanpur.
Hope all young aspirants lend there ears to this message from Sehwag and understand the serious implications behind it.
Second thing that struck me was an initiative taken by an NGO at Villupuram, Tamil Nadu. Looking at the alarming rate of dropouts and very low literacy levels among the Muslims, the NGO has started paying Re one every day to students attending state run elementary school at a village called Sankarapuram. The area supposedly a Muslim dominated region with Tamil or Urdu as their mother tongue. So the scheme was launched at Urdu medium Panchayat Union elementary School.
At a time when the cost of education is increasing day by day, if NGOs and other organisations don't take up steps like these; poor people especially in economically backward areas would back-out from even primary education. So let's try to encourage such initiatives and help in increasing the literacy level which will give a big boost to all our national development plans.