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Commitment to the cause
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IOC's consistent support to the players is showing good results
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In the decades gone by, government institutions and corporate houses such as the Tatas were the mainstay for sportspersons seeking for jobs. Over time, banks stopped their recruitment and many other departments followed suit.
As downsizing became the mantra and jobs got scarce, sportspersons began to migrate in the quest for secure livelihood. For instance, promising sportspersons from Andhra Pradesh went in search of employment to Tamil Nadu and even to Gujarat.
With such a depressing scenario for a backdrop, it's heartening to see the oil majors consistently enrolling sportspersons. A frontrunner on this count has been Indian Oil Corporation, which had a sports policy in place way back in 1985. It has been the firm's aim to nurture talent till it blooms at the national and international levels.
That their commitment to the cause has been sincere is evident from the galaxy of sportspersons on its rolls and in varied disciplines. Here are some of the 74 sportspersons it employs: former all England champion P. Gopichand and Olympian Aparna Popat in badminton, A. Sharath Kamal, Melbourne Commonwealth Games gold medallist, S. Raman and Soumyadeep Roy in table tennis, Grand Masters Surya Sekhar Ganguly and Abhijit Kunte in chess, Rohan Bopanna, Rushmi Chakravarthy and Sai Jayalakshmi in tennis, Deepak Thakur, Viren Rasquinha, Prabhjyot Singh, Devesh Chauhan and Baljeet Singh in hockey, Wasim Jaffer and Iqbal Siddiqui in cricket.
Besides providing backing to sportspersons, the corporate has also financed the conduct of major events such as the Surjit hockey tournament, the Subroto Cup football championship, the SAARC golf tournament, Servo Challenge tennis, Indian Open (golf), Thomas/Uber cup in badminton, the Asian Badminton Championships, the Beighton Cup and the Asia Cup in cricket.
Support of sportspersons has not just been in material form. For instance, the corporation takes pride in the fact that four of its employees received the Arjuna Award in 2005 — Suryashekhar Ganguly, Soumyadeep Roy, Viren Rasquinha and Aparna Popat. So does it laud the half-dozen strong presence of its players in India's hockey team — Deepak Thakur, Devesh Chauhan, Viren Rasquinha, Prabhjot Singh, Baljeet Singh and Nitin Kumar.
For the Commonwealth Games at Melbourne, earlier this year, there were three of its employees in badminton alone — Aparna Popat, Trupti Murgunde, Nikhil Kanetkar and a similar number in table tennis — singles champion A. Sharath Kamal, Soumyadeep Roy (the duo saw India win the team title as well) and Kasturi Chakraborthy.
Rohan Bopanna has represented India in the Davis Cup as also Rushmi Chakravarthy in the Asian Games. Irina Brar, the nation's leading lady golfer is also with Indian Oil.
The oil major has started a sports scholarship carrying Rs. 5000 a month along with sports kit to 55 sportspersons in different games from across the country.
A.J.A.
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