Volleyball’s silent revolution

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Editor's note: Abhijit Bhattacharya has internalized the difference between passive voice (“Something must be done”) and active voice (“I must do something”). The penny dropped for the ONGC employee and former captain of the national volleyball team in early 2019, when he was invited to play an official role in the Assam Volleyball Association as president or secretary. Abhijit declined—and if you have been following the roiled state of Volleyball Federation of India affairs (a small sample here), you can infer why any person with integrity would want to steer clear of an official role in the federation and/or its associates. Having declined an official role, Abhijit sat back to think. Of how volleyball had been popular across Assam in the 1970s and ’80s. How, even into the ’90s and early 2000s Assam had produced quality players—Abhijit himself had led the Indian team with distinction in the early 2000s. “That popularity has steadily eroded,” Abhijit told me in course of an extended Zoom call this week. “And that made me think. You can either mourn the decline of the sport, or you …