Former Odisha hockey player impoverishes as the country celebrates bronze Latest news from India

The bronze performance of the Indian men’s national hockey team at the Tokyo Olympics has certainly sparked interest in hockey again, but the 26-year-old former defender of Odisha, who represented the state in the men’s championships, has served as a migrant worker for a living.

Played for the Gangpur-Odisha hockey team (one of Hockey India’s allied teams) in the 2013 and 2014 senior men’s hockey championships, Santosh Majhi, a tribe of Lulkidih village in Sundargarh district, stood on a rock and defended his team’s goals from the robbers ’attackers. opposing teams. But 7 years later, the world of Majhis is far from the world of hockey when he moved to Goa last year to work on fishing boats 6000 per month.

I have no choice but to go to work. I have no future in hockey, even if I wanted to play, Majhi said from his home in Lulkid, a village that has produced at least two Olympic winners Deepgrace Ekka from the women’s hockey team and former Olympian Ignace Tirkey. With at least seven international players, Lulkidih is considered the Odisha Hockey Kindergarten along with the village of Saunamara, where former captain of the Indian hockey team Dilip Tirkey comes from.

Like most tribal children in the Sundargarh area, Majhi took up hockey at the age of 11 when he joined Panposhi’s sports hostel. For his daily-paid father, sports promised to escape the worries of life. At the hostel, he excelled as a defender and played for the Hockey Gangpur team in 2013 and 2014. After leaving the sports hostel in 2015, he played for the Paradip Port Trust in all of India’s largest hockey championships in 2016, 2017 and 2018, but gets no jobs from there.

Majhi said in 2016 that he had tried to get a job in the Indian Army through a sports quota, but was rejected for a varicose vein during a medical test. His problems have also worsened because he was unable to pass the upper secondary exam in 2016 after a hand fracture.

Area social activist Arun Kumar Sahu said it is annoying to see players like Majh fight to live. Even if the state government and center spend money on hockey, players like him would be good to rehabilitate, Sahu said.

Odisha’s sports secretary Vineel Krishna said that although Majhi represented Gangpur Odisha among the elderly citizens, he did not secure any position. While the state government has a policy of giving government jobs to all medalists, he is not eligible for the job, according to the home department, he said.