8 years ago, on Christmas Day there was an Executive Body Meeting of the All India Chess Federation held at Chennai, Chepauk Stadium. I, then Vice-President of the Goa State Chess Association went there representing the GSCA, as the Secretary at the time was unable to go for personal reasons.
The President of the AICF then was, as now is, N Srinivasan, Chairman of India Cements. Incidentally he then was also Treasurer of BCCI of which he now is President and in the eye of the storm of spot fixing match fixing gambling and other scandals, courtesy his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan. Now why am I telling you this story about my associaciation with Srinivasan however tenuous, if not to drop names? Well I could also drop names about the film-director Gulzar and the writer Amitav Ghosh, but let's leave that for some other time ;-) As I was saying the meeting in Chennai surprised me at the way the cognoscenti of chess players and administrators who were present just nodded their heads like lambs as one of Shrinivasan's chelas Sunder Rajan just dictated what everyone was supposed to do, even though much of this was quite disputable. I personally did not keep my mouth shut as you might expect and when it came to representing the cause of Goa went hammer and tongs demanding that a National tournament be allotted to Goa. Anyway the main point to be noted is that grown men (it is usually men who are represented at such meetings) act like sycophantic lambs when in the presence of the powerful. The second reason why N Srinivasan came to affect Goa Chess happened during one of the auctions for players where as Owner of Chennai Super Kings he bid in the crores of rupees for players when he was still Treasurer of BCCI. Seeing the stupendous amounts bandied around my friend Shrikant Barve asked a question on Yahoo Answers to the effect that when as Treasurer of BCCI Shrinivasan could bid lakhs and crores for cricketers why was it that he was not willing to pay such sums of money to chess players like Vishwanathan Anand who got more glory for India than the cricketers. (At the time Shrikant was going great guns promoting chess in Goa see http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-sports-goanet.org/2007-September/000053.html ) This was brought to the notice of Shrinivasan who arm twisted Sameer Salgaocar then President of GSCA and Jt Secy of AICF into hounding Shrikant Barve who was a real entrepreneur of chess out of the game. Sadly Barve had many enemies in Goa who took advantage of the situation to ensure that he never came back to the game officially thanks to this stupid situation. Now the Goa Chess Association has as its President Vinay Tendulkar BJP State President who has not an iota of understanding of chess. Goan Chess R I P. In conclusion I say this: I belong to a generation which lived through the Emergency, a generation which saw how craven politicians were towards their Master Indira Gandhi. Post Emergency EVERYONE had vowed that never again should we allow ourselves to be sycophantic as people were then. But I have begun to notice that once again people have begun to return to sycophantic ways, not just in national or state politics, but even in our social associations and jobs where our bosses are concerned. It is time that we check the directions in which we are moving, unless we want to be vasectomised in Sanjay Gandhi style ALL OVER AGAIN. Best Augusto -- Augusto Pinto 40, Novo Portugal Moira, Bardez Goa, India E pinto...@gmail.com P 0832-2470336 M 9881126350
