Interaction of GYM delegates with Mr. P. Gopichand on
Dr. Reddy: Mr. Gopichand won the All England Badminton Championship in 2001. He is also the recipient of one of the highest Indian Civilian Awards conferred by the President of India- the Padma Sri Award. But what sets him out is not that he was very successful sportsman known not only for the brilliance of his play and absolute integrity to approach in all the aspects of sports, but one other side that is not widely known is that after he won the All Indian Badminton Championship, he was approached by Cola companies to become their celebrity spokesperson to endorse their products. For those who are not aware of what happens in India in terms of sports people endorsing these cola beverages… it’s a huge contract, a very lucrative contract and many of our sportsperson in other fields do endorse them to their great advantage, but Mr. Gopichand declined to endorse them for personal reasons of principle to which he wanted to adhere and turned down this very lucrative contract.
Mr. Gopichand, we would like to ask you what went through your mind when you were offered those very high dollar figure contracts and then what made you actually say ‘No’ to it?
Mr. Gopichand: Very good afternoon everybody, well I won the All England Badminton Championship in the year 2001 and when I came back it wasn’t a great year in terms of Indian economy. But once I was back here, there were not many contracts, but one of them was from a coca cola company. What I still remember is that I myself haven’t drunk a soft drink, aerated drink rather from almost 1997. When I started the programme about health and fitness, the reasons why certain types of food should be and certain types of food should not be avoided were the basis why I stopped drinking soft drinks and also advocating to many of my fellow players and friends not to drink. It was important for me to stick to what I stand. At the end of the day, it is also important for me to sleep well at night because I don’t want to cheat myself by saying something else, preach something else and doing something different. So, I don’t want to take the responsibility of a small kid going in and saying that I am drinking it because Gopichand wants me to drink it or Gopichand is advertising for it. That is the primary reason why I didn’t take this endorsement.
Dr. Reddy: Thank you, but we didn’t see many people in the world adhering to this kind of principle. We find sport stars even advertising for tobacco products or surrogate of tobacco products or surrogate of alcohol products. Whether it is cola beverages which are directly advertised or tobacco products which are indirectly advertised and endorsed by sports stars. There appears to be a complete disassociation between what they do in their own personal life and what they tell others, especially young people to do. How do you think sports people should really be made more aware of the social responsibility and they encourage to get away from this kind of endorsement?
Mr. Gopichand: Well, as a sportsman one of the things which actually is thrust upon you and try to believe is that your career is small. One of the saying is that ‘make hay when the sun shines’. The limelight on a sportsman’s career is very less and they try to make as much of money as they can in their short career span. Compared to other fields probably as MBA who would study and in the later part of their life earn, the sportsmen are best only when they are playing. Lots of their managers are quite aggressive in marketing. Sometimes the sportspersons are not told or are not certain enough to understand the kind of implications these thing have. In such a case, I think it’s important we need policies in place which stop advertising of these things. If we know that an X product is bad, then I believe that the government should step in and ban advertisement of such products. Sometime, somethings which might appear very strongly for me may not appear equally strong for other or they might say ok, I will compromise- that option should not be given.
Dr. Reddy: The last question I would like to ask you is that given the fact that young people are becoming more and more sedentary, spending more time on television and computer and even in school they are not able to get much physical activity time. What do you think sportspersons should do to try and get the young people more physically active?
Mr. Gopichand: I think in general, if we should look at the way we people are living in the last few years. If I look at myself - my grandparents seem to be fitter than my parents, my parents seem to be fitter than me. The next generation seems to be not as fit as our generation. So there seems to be definite decline in the level of general health for everybody and I think that needs to be seriously addressed. We are having pollution in terms of air, water, in terms of food, thought and stress. These are the things which are the major killers. Is the money worth it if you can’t sit together and eat a proper meal! Earlier we had not heard of heart diseases at 31, 32 years of age, diabetes at such a young age. Cancer related problems have become so high in the past few years. These things are becoming popular. This needs to be addressed seriously. Is living a fast stressful life healthy or do we need to compromise on the speed at which we are living or think and re-look at our own lives and the way we live .At the end of the day, we have to decide whether what we are doing is good or not. I think these are the major issues and I am happy that somebody is thinking on these lines and trying to address these problems which sometimes get lost in marketing and advertising and these issues are being addressed in this meeting.
