The Hockey Asia Cup tournament is less of a hockey competition and more of a political campaign. The tournament took off with 150 players on 29th August in Rajgir, Bihar, with Nitish Kumar’s face plastered all around.
Bihar is heading for elections later this year. While the SIR controversy is about tolls, it didn’t stop the Chief Minister, who is serving the 5th consecutive year, from decorating the 99.7-acre, RS 600 crore complex with refined pictures of himself.
From the banners at the entrance of the stadium to the buses, lamp posts, and water tanks everywhere, Kumar has solidified his presence. Along with these physical banners, he also appeared during the matches on digital ad boards that are placed around the field, and his face looks out from a massive hoarding placed just behind the north stand. One will alsou spot him on the state government’s official website, endorsing the Asia Cup.
The head of the Janata Party has announced the tournament mascot, the trophy and the logo. To support the event, he also travelled to Rajgir to inaugurate the Asia Cup and communicated with the audience through waving hands for 15 minutes.
He expressed hope that the Asia Cup would help position Bihar as a “global” destination. In a statement shared by Hockey India earlier this year, he remarked that “The tournament’s arrival in Bihar underscores the state’s growing prominence on the global sports stage.”
While this is not a new ordeal to boost the promotion of politics rather than sports. The Bihar State Sports Authority Director General Raveendran Sankaran told the Indian Express that the tournament was already scheduled way before it was not-nearly ‘election-orientated’.
“I beg to differ. If this would have happened in haste, thinking that elections are around the corner, it would have been a different story. But we started two years ago,” Sankaran stated.
While in the rapidly growing ecosystem of sports, Bihar has been the straggler. The state has yet to produce any international hockey players and ranked 28th at the previous National Games held in Uttarakhand. While talking, Sankaran stated that the true motivation of this event was the sporting fortune of the state and creating new opportunities for sports in Bihar.
