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NRI Dhanoa, the
Roman Abramovich of kabaddi!
For 36-year-old
Harjinder Singh Dhanoa, an England-based NRI, frequent trips to
India in general and Punjab in particular are for a cause —
promoting sports at the grass root level. Credited with extending
financial support to the country’s first ever girls hockey academy
at Jalandhar, Mr Dhanoa has also adopted the academy for tall boys
and girls being run by the Punjab Basketball Association at Ludhiana.
Next on his list
is an exclusive academy for promising grapplers, a sport which is
very dear to him. Maybe he will turn out to be the Roman Abramovich
of Kabaddi! Abramovich is the chairman of Chelsea football club.
Dhanoa spends around Rs 1.5 crore every year to promote sports
activities in Punjab which he now sees as an anti-dote to the
increasingly permeating culture of drugs in the state.
He had also
sponsored the National Basketball Championship for junior boys and
girls at Ludhiana’s indoor basketball stadium. Incidentally, Mr
Dhanoa belongs to Parasrampur village in Jalandhar, which
is hardly at a stone’s throw from Talhan, the village that made
national news for incidents of
caste violence. “Ours is a family business and we import fruit and
vegetables from Mexico and Jamaica and have a chain of offices
throughout England. My father, Mr Amrik Singh Dhanoa, moved to
England in early 60s. After doing my matric from Jalandhar, I also
joined my father there but returned home soon as the life in England
did not suit my temperament. After doing my plus two, I again
returned to England, this time to settle there, and got married.
Since I had done my degree in civil engineering, I started working
as a civil contractor,” he explains by way of his background.
“Now my company
undertakes major civil projects, including building of roads,
bridges and channels. Success in business and construction company
never made me forget my motherland and I was always keen to comeback
and do something for my people, my village and my state.
“My father
wanted me to undertake complete ‘sewa’ of renovating the village Gurdwara. That has been my first
project. I have spent about Rs 66 lakh on the gurdwara and propose
to make it one of the best in the region. Four years ago, I got
support from some friends and formed the Baba Ludhiana Youth Sports
Club with Olympian Kartar Singh as its President and Mr Rana Singh
Kandola of the USA as its Vice-Chairman.
“This Club
organises an eightday rural sports festival beginning on third
Monday of February every year. The main attraction of the festival
is wrestling competitions in which the winner in each of four
categories gets a cash prize of Rs 1.11 lakh. The competitions are
also held for women wrestlers who are also offered equally
attractive cash prizes. Our annual budget for the festival is Rs 33
lakh. During the festival, we also organise competitions in other
sports, including weightlifting, track and field, kabaddi and tug of
war.
“To sustain my
long stays here, I have started a small company in Jalandhar in the
name of my younger son, Gaven. Initially, my wife and children were
reluctant to visit India, but now they have started evincing
interest in the annual sports festival we organise at our village.
In the village gurdwara, we have a residential block, a big langar
hall, a modern kitchen and all the facilities for the participants
and officials to stay.
27 September, 2006
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