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

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