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IOC takes note of India's National Games

From today, May 31, all roads in Bangalore lead to the Kanteerava Stadium, where President Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma arrives to inagurate the fourth edition of the National Games in a state of the art stadium complete with synthetic track, football arena, floodlights and accompanying indoor stadium.

And for the very first time, the International Olympic Committee's flag will fly alonside that of the Indian Olympic Association and Karnataka Olympic Association flags - symbolising the fact that the IOC has extended its partronage, and a grant of $10,000, to the National Games. "It is an honour," says IOA president Suresh Kalmadi, rather needlessly.

This will also be the first time that a videomatrix scoreboard will be used in an Indian stadium - yet another small step towards bringing sports infrastructure in India up to current international standards.

"We should be seeing the start of a big surge in sports activity," Kalmadi, optimistic as ever, enthuses. "With the Union government announcing tax reliefs for contributions towards sports, especially towards development of infrastructure, we expect that the corporate sector will come forward in a big way towards the promotion of sports."

27 States, besides the Services contingent, have confirmed their entries, and Doordarshan has factored in 11 hours of coverage, most of it live, into its programming.

Again, the National Games has attracted sponsorship to an extent unheard of earlier. Videocon, the principal sponsors, are shelling out Rs 40 million by way of sponsorship, and the company's corporate advisor S Padmanabhan adds that the comany has earmarked another Rs 40 million by way of providing incentives to stellar sportspersons. With Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram slated to give away the awards on June 10, Videocon, Padmanabhan said, "hopes to give him some amount towards a corpus, which can be used for the development of sports, and a seperate fund for those sportspersons who are ailing and require medical aid."

Obviously, the corporate segment is now entering the sporting arena - in a big and, for sports lovers, heartening, fashion.