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This can happen only in India. Just when it’s chin-up time for the national women’s hockey team, the Indian Women’s Hockey Federation (IWHF) seems to have decided to give it the thumbs-down. Why else did the federation mete out the shabby treatment that it did to the triumphant hockey team that returned from a tour of Australia after winning seven out of eight matches?

Not only were the girls reportedly lodged in a decrepit dormitory with dirty toilets and kitchen at the Karnail Singh Stadium in the capital, but also had their match fees and stipends suspended!

It was a nightmarish experience as 14 players were stashed together in a room with no clean blankets, which left them unable to sleep and recover from tiredness. The IWHF’s explanation that the guesthouse where the team was scheduled to stay had suddenly run out of rooms is a feeble attempt at damage control. From all accounts, the players’ stipend was also stopped inexplicably six months ago, forcing them to buy everything from hockey sticks to expensive shoes themselves. As if this wasn’t disgraceful enough, the IWHF also owes the players more than an apology for choking the funds released for kit and equipment by the Sports Ministry. How could any team that is preparing for the biggest test of their lives - the Olympic qualifiers - be expected to take such intrigues in its stride and still excel on the field?

It is a sad fact that this is particularly true of sportswomen in team games like hockey and football, who are seldom considered ’star’ material or role models - unlike, say, in tennis or athletics that invariably recognises individual brilliance.

As a result, some of the best dribblers in the world get to stay at hotels where even state cricket teams wouldn’t, and are still expected to play their hearts out for a paltry match fees at the end of the day. It is a tribute to the enterprise of sports people in the country that they continue to excel despite these hurdles - be it sprinters running barefoot on sandy beaches to increase speed or weightlifters substituting rocks for dumb-bells. The least that people who preside over sports bodies can do is to ask themselves why, even after successful is outings, our sports people - with the notable exception of cricketers - are ill subjected to such humiliating treatment when they return home.

The much awaited revamp of the Congress and the UPA is running behind schedule. There were indications that it would happen sometime in 2007-end, but the matter has been delayed possibly because of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s indisposition. Now that she is fine, the reshuffle can take place on a date decided by her and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The need to revitalize the organisation has been felt over the past few months after repeated blunders by the office-bearers and senior functionaries in charge of the states cost the party heavily. It was clear that the Congress had no strategy for the elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. But those responsible for losses seem to have got away without even a strong reprimand. In fact, they have tried to shift the focus by blaming others. Many of them have taken refuge in the fact that since Ms Gandhi and Rahul were involved in the campaigning, they are also responsible for the defeats. It is obvious that they don’t want to take into account the fact that Ms Gandhi and Rahul were-only supposed to supplement their efforts.

As mentioned in this column three weeks ago, Ms Gandhi has done more than her share to strengthen the party. She not only stopped its slide in 1998, but it was only because of her that the party along with its allies was able to overcome the challenge of the “feel-good factor” of the NDA and wrest power at the Centre. If the Congress is forgetting its winning ways, it’s because those who earned her trust have repeatedly let her down.

Ms Gandhi has too many tasks at hand including coordinating with the UPA allies. But there seems to be a pattern in the wrong advice she has been getting over the past few years and this has led to the Congress not doing well even in its strongholds.

Take Himachal Pradesh for example. The Congress has lost power but is yet to formulate any strategy for the future. The appointment of Vidya Stokes as the Congress Legislature party leader will not help the party. Stokes, who has a very distinguished track record, was a strong contender for the CM’s post in 2003. But Virbhadra Singh was appointed the CM.

She spent the next five years complaining to the party leadership how Singh’s appointment was not in the best interest of the Congress, as he was “a law unto himself”. But no one heard her out. Now when the game is over, at least for the time being in HP, she is back in favour. But like Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, who was appointed in Punjab after Congress lost power last year; Stokes is not cut out for the job. She is too senior and someone younger should have been given the responsibility. Bhattal has also proved to be a failure as the leader of Opposition but the Congress has not been able to replace her even though she was made the Punjab Congress Committee chief. Amarinder Singh, who is a better bet against the Parkash Singh Badal government, has been pushed to the oblivion.

Similarly, the Congress lost in Rajasthan because of Ashok Gehlot’s inability to deliver. Taking advantage, the BJP contested 57 seats in the Jat belt where it had never fought before. Thanks to some smart strategising by former Congressman Chander Raj Singhvi, the BJP registered a win. But when Congress reshuffled its party structure in Rajasthan, it brought back all the people who were close to Gehlot.

Like Gehlot, Digvijay Singh was made a general secretary of the All India Congress Committee after the Congress lost to the BJP and Uma Bharti in Madhya Pradesh. After the defeat, he had sworn that he would’ not occupy any high office but took up the post. If losing CMs are made general secretaries or Governors (like S.M. Krishna), there is hope for people like Virbhadra Singh and Amarinder Singh, unless the Congress revises its strategy and makes it more practical and victory-oriented.

Some changes are expected in states like Maharashtra. But the decision to send Sushil kumar Shinde to Maharashtra is yet to be implemented. These days no one knows why sound decisions don’t get implemented swiftly in the Congress.

The AICC also needs attention. There are six members from Karnataka who are either general secretaries or in-charge of the states. One wonders whether they can help the party win in their state when the polls take place in March. There are other funny situations as well. Only some AICC secretaries have been assigned some work; the rest are moving around like headless chickens. To make matters worse, while some office-bearers are without work, there are ministers or CWC members who have the additional responsibilities of looking after the states. Prithviraj Chavan and Ajay Maken belong to this category.

It is the prerogative of a political party to appoint its media team. But when former Karnataka CM Veerappa Moily (remember the Molly tapes episode?) got the top job, eyebrows were raised. He does not understand the national media since he has only been a regional player and has limited access to Ms Gandhi. The party’s media department certainly needs to be overhauled. After Jaipal Reddy and Ambika Soni, the party has not been able to find good replacements. .

Elections are due in 10 states in 2008. The Congress must wake up and its ministers need to shoulder more responsibilities. Other parties are reaping the political dividend of the good schemes started by Centre since the Congress is not making any effort to earn mileage. The party needs to resuscitate itself. For that, a revamp of the organisation and the e government is needed. Between us.

We have been round this block before. Market turmoil, emergency rescue, looming recession. The important thing, when faced with any financial panic, is to distinguish between what is happening in the markets and what is happening in the real economy. The two are linked, of course: market crashes undermine economic confidence and may undermine growth and employment; while a strong economy will usually be reflected in buoyant asset prices. But you can have market crashes without a corresponding economic decline and vice versa.

After the crash in October 1987, the world economy continued expanding for another three years, and the worst longer term decline in world share prices for a generation, from 2000 to 2003, was associated with a relative mild global recession. By contrast, until about 18 months ago, the Chinese economic boom had taken place alongside a terrible stock market performance. Since then, it has shot up; but for many years the world’s fastest-growing economy had the world’s worst-performing stock market.

So we should not assume that this sharp reaction in world shares prices, even if it persists despite the emergency cut in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, is necessarily signaling that there will be a global recession this year. Some sort of slowdown is taking place and some countries, including the US and maybe, to a lesser extent, the UK, will suffer worse than others.

But the world economy is still growing solidly and it will take some time for that momentum to come off. And there is no reason to suppose that the next global downturn will be more serious than the previous three, in the early 1980s, early 1990s and early 2000s.

The thing to be clear about is that the US matters but it does not matter as much as it used to.  Last year, for the first time in a couple of centuries, China added more demand to the world than either the US or Continental Europe. It is not immune from a recession in the US but its fastest-growing markets are elsewhere in Asia, not the States. As for the US, the fall in the dollar has already started to correct its current account deficit and the long boom has largely corrected its fiscal deficit.

So, sure, there will be a rough couple of years there, which may or may not dip into the technical definition of recession: two successive quarters of negative growth. But there are things the Fed and the Administration can do, cutting interest rates and making some tax cuts that will help the economy through these tougher limes. Expect also a continuing flow of investment funds into the US to take advantage of the weak dollar, The States has to sell solid assets to pay for its past excesses and that is not very smart but it is still a huge and efficient economy.

Other countries have problems too. Germany is the world’s largest goods exporter so, on that basis, should be hardest hit by a downturn in global trade. The high euro damages all European exporters. Spain has a worse housing bubble than even the UK. More than one-fifth of Japan’s exports go to the US and the mood there is just as bad as in the rest of the developed world.

However, in calibrating all the mass of economic junk that is flooding out at the moment, you have to remember that the world has just had one of the fastest-growing years it has ever experienced. So it would be pretty amazing if things did not ease back a bit. In the UK, we have this particular problem of a large and growing fiscal deficit but we also have, at the .moment at least, record employment and we have just had a year of growth of more than 3 per cent. The latest surveys of industrial opinion are gloomy but not that gloomy. Everything points to a slowdown rather than a collapse.

So why are the markets collapsing? The short answer is that they always overreact and at the moment are having one of their periodic mood swings from greed to fear.  Three months ago, shares worldwide were at an all-time high. Despite the fact that here they just failed to reach their previous peak at the Millennium, we have still had five years when shares ended the year higher than they started.

So you can explain the present falls in terms of a natural and inevitable reaction, if a delayed action one, to the other financial strains of last year, in particularly the pressure on the banks. Bankers, like the rest of us, make mistakes, but the scale of the mistakes, particularly in US banks, has been enormous. We won’t fully understand for some time quite how they could persuade themselves that bundles of housing loans to clearly uncreditworthy borrowers should be ranked as almost as good as government securities.

The legitimate question now seems to me to be whether the continuing banking weakness has become so serious as to transfer what is still a financial market problem into a more general economic problem. I cannot believe it will for three reasons.

One is that core loans on which the banks have made these large paper losses are still going to be worth something. Two is that interest rates can and will continue to come down and that will cut bank funding costs. And three, as we have learned with Northern Rock, we taxpayers have to support any bank that gets into trouble. Banking troubles will be a drag on the world economy, slowing it down. But they won’t stop it in its tracks.