India's failure of Olympic proportions
By Neeta LalDELHI - As India limbers up for the world's greatest sports spectacle - the Summer Olympic Games which open in Beijing on Friday - the pressing question going around Delhi is whether Indian athletes will be able to bring home medals this year. Or will they repeat their debacle in Athens 2004 where they managed an embarrassing total of a single silver medal?
Well, the auguries don't look too good. For one, a nation of a billion-plus people - the world's most populous democracy - has dispatched a small squad of 57 athletes (and 42 officials) to the Games. In other words, with a total of 28 sports and 302 events to compete in, only a meager 57 Indians athletes are qualified participants.
Contrast this with the United States, which marches into Beijing with a powerhouse contingent of 596 athletes. China has 639 and even tiny Estonia has 47 representatives. In terms of the total Olympic medal tallied, India ranks even behind Nigeria, a country whose economy is one-twentieth of its size.
Since India started participating in the Games in 1900, it has managed only 17 medals and only 12 since its independence in 1947. Even this abysmal tally is skewed, as the bulk of the medals (11) have been won in field hockey a team sport for which India didn't qualify this year.
Most disquieting for Indian sport lovers this year is not the tiny squad, not even the past dismal record, but the glaring omission of India's national sport - hockey - from the Olympic contingent. This is all the more hurtful considering this is the first time that the Indian hockey team has ever failed to qualify.
Why does India perform so poorly at the Olympics? Why does a nation that awes the world with its IT prowess, its spectacular economic growth trajectory and its ever expanding list of billionaires, score so dismally in global sports?
For one, India's annual budget for sports is too meager. This year's US$280 million worth of funding is overshadowed by international standards. For example, China's - one of India's biggest rivals - has earmarked $2 billion for this year's Games.
About half the money from India's outlay will be channeled towards administrative expenses and the salaries of officials and bureaucrats. In other words, much of it will be gobbled up in administrative expense rather than the crucial training of athletes. The few international star athletes which India has produced (Sania Mirza, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi in tennis and Vishwanathan Anand in chess, to name a few) have succeeded in spite - not because of - the nation's sports administration systems.
Given India's low sports budget and an all-pervasive bureaucratic insensitivity towards sports, fans can hardly expect glittering medals. Instead they're left with sub-par training camps, inferior coaches and low-standard sports infrastructure. It should be no surprise then that the National Institute of Sports (Patiala) - the "training ground" for most Indian Olympic athletes - functions without such basics as a physiologist, psychologist or nutritionist.
"A long-term national sports strategy is vital for success in the Olympics which India sorely lacks," says K P Gaekwad, a former national-level athlete, who now runs his own training academy. "In India, intensive training of selected Olympians begins a few months before the start of the Games. In this last-minute scramble, athletes are sent abroad and foreign coaches hired. Is this any way to win Olympic gold?"
This appears all the more unfortunate considering that in recent years, global sport has gone spectacularly hi-tech and involves ultra-sophisticated training equipment, well-qualified coaches, nutritionists, therapists and medical experts who can calibrate an athlete's performance to a nano-second.
But perhaps what is most responsible for India's pathetic performance at the Olympics is the lack of a strong and vibrant sports culture. Sports education - which ought to be an integral part of school and college curriculum - is sorely missing. This is largely because of the mindsets of Indian parents and teachers who accord little importance to sports education and excellence. They are more interested in scoring high marks in academics. To a degree this is understandable, given the cutthroat competition in India to get into good educational institutes, but it often undermines a student's athletic potential.
A majority of government-financed schools, which enroll 80% of Indian students, rarely offer any physical education or development. According to a 1999 Public Report on Basic Education, 48% of government schools in India don't possess a playground.
As the report puts it, "The school buildings are usually bare, often dilapidated and even ******. No teaching aids are used and the child may not even have a textbook. There is no craftwork or color or music; physical activity is rare ... Very few schools have any activity in the nature of organized play."
Apart from ossified mindsets and abysmal infrastructure, India's Olympic disaster can be attributed to the lack of a system for discovering and nurturing talented youth. The country has no long-term strategy to encourage sports education in schools or colleges. The government has done little to develop athletic facilities or invite world-class trainers and sports managers to provide sporting clinics. For a prime example, India need look no further than China, which has rapidly become an Olympic superpower thanks to a rigorous and extensive sports system.
Many feel that the first step for India would be to loosen the tight control of politicians, bureaucrats and administrators over the country's numerous sports associations - at the Athens Games in 2004, 227 officials accompanied 75 athletes.
According to A K Qazi, formerly with the Sports Authority of India, Indian sports associations are infested with politicians and retired bureaucrats. "And since top-level positions in most associations are honorary these people are not accountable to anyone which gives them the license to go about their work in the most unprofessional way," said Qazi.
However, since these positions offer official perquisites such as complimentary travel, spiffy hotel accommodation, daily allowances and foreign junkets, these retirees are most unwilling to let go of them.
It seems clear that if India is to produce internationally competitive athletes, it has to start training a larger number of youth and train them correctly. This requires the sustained promotion of athletic activity in schools and colleges. It also requires a change in attitude for parents and educators. Qazi believes sports organizations should be managed by dynamic sports professionals.
After all, China's emergence as an Olympic superpower is due to an excellent sports network that ensures that the government funding goes to the development of Olympic prospects.
India has much to learn before it can impress the world with its sporting prowess. But this is the realm of sport where, as they say, "hope springs eternal". Perhaps it won't be too far into the future when this high-potential nation - with the world's largest population of youth - will begin to produce gold medals and Olympic champions.
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