Have You Ever Seen A Mixed Football Team? Bengal Just Screened One!

¡°Why there is only one international wheelchair woman athlete from Bengal?¡± asked Sayan Roy, Co-owner, Five Mad Men, who recently adopted a Para-athlete from Bengal for 1 year. This question opened a can of worms.

In the Paralympics movement, one of the most important problems which has come up in the last decade is the participation of women. In India the situation is even worse with only a couple of women participating in the world Paralympic games in last 20 years. In Bengal the state is very similar with only 5 consistent national level women athletes with disabilities in last 10 years. One of the problems for women participating apart from patriarchal issues is because of our inability to train them at par their male counterparts. While the existing sports model is segregation of gender, in a country like India any further segregation of an already segregated gender leads to otherization. In a bid to change this scenario from the grassroot level, Civilian Welfare Foundation, an organization working at intersections with gender, disability and child education along with Aciesta Sports Pvt Ltd , a company dealing with alternate forms of sports, specially football, organised the first ungendered (mixed) football screening camp for young athletes with disabilities. One of the primary goals of this initiative is to take part in the Adapted Football International Tournament (TIFA) in Portugal on 26th-28th September 2019. While taking up an innovative and socially challenging project is an uphill task in Bengal Paralympics, this was only possible because of the efforts of Five Mad Men, a Gastro play pub in Sector 5, Kolkata who started India¡¯s first innovative program of optional contribution of Rs. 10/- to Paralympics with each bill generated in their sports bar.

Civilianwelfare Foundation

The screening camp which was organized for 3 days at Milanayatan Playground, Haltu saw participation from 37 students with multiple disabilities from 19 schools. In order to make the screening systematic and scientific, the selection were done in four separate processes - 1. Administrative where the participants were checked with their disability and sports credentials by Disability activist Abhirupa Kar, Secretary , Civilian Welfare Foundation 2. Technical abilities with respect to football by AIFF certified coach Abhijit Ghosh 3. Mental toughness and endurance by Anusheela Brahmachary , Sports Psychologist , Dept of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Medica Superspeciality Hospital and 4. Physical Toughness by Pamela Pradhan & Temjenmongla Aier , Physio, Dept of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Medica Superspeciality Hospital.

Civilianwelfare foundation

According to Anusheela Brahmachary, a Sports Psychologist, many different aspects of girl child segregation came up in the camp. ¡°It is amazing how a simple team exercise between a group of 7 children (4 boys and 3 girls) can demonstrate so many factors influencing inclusion. Like the natural tendency of any group, this group also right away identified its leaders- 2 boys with dominating personalities. The task they had to perform was to align themselves according to their heights. The team took 3 trials to do that correctly. In the first trial, the 2 leaders dictated the arrangement and everyone else followed. In the second trial, a meek boy started pointing out the flaw in the arrangement but went unheard because of his timid nature. The most significant thing happening in the group was -there was no communication between the boys and the girls. Finally, in the desperate third attempt, a team cohesion established and they were successful in doing the task.¡±

Anusheela added that ¡°none of the behaviour demonstrated by the children was intended, but the discrimination was apparent. This exercise probably portrays the conscious and the unconscious marginalisation that happens in the society. Irrespective of all the pursuits, people tend to get shadowed for their gender, class, disability and even personality¡±

Civilianwelfare Foundation

Among the participants, 20 para-athletes were chosen for the team who will be trained in successive conditioning camps in next three months for TIFA. While this marks a new beginning of ungendered football in Bengal Paralympics, it also showed the need for including multiple disabilities in a systematic manner in a sport.