Making History…A Little Too Late

By Anish Malpani 5 September 2008 453 views 8 Comments

Abhinav Bindra

11th August, 2008 witnessed the making of Indian Olympic history. Shooter Abhinav Bindra became the first-ever Indian to win a gold medal in an individual event in the history of the Olympics.

20th August, 2008 also witnessed the making of Indian Olympic history. Wrestler Sushil Kumar bagged India’s second individual medal and for the first time since 1956, enabled India to secure two gold individual medals at a single Olympics.

In the history of the Olympics, India has been the most successful in its national sport, field hockey, collecting a whopping 8 gold medals in a period of 60 years between 1920 and 1980. All in all, over the past 100 years, India has won 9 golds (8 hockey ones), 4 silvers and 6 bronzes which adds up to a modest total of 19 Olympic medals.

China, on the other hand, won 63 medals in the 2004 Olympics. In the current 2008 games, China has already notched 79 Olympic medals.

So, while India seems to be “blooming” with its first ever double Olympic medal accomplishment in over fifty years, it is nowhere close to making the slightest impact in the Olympics. Since the 1980 gold, field hockey has been a lifeless desert. At this year’s Olympics, India did not even qualify for the final championships. With only 5 medals over 28 years in 7 Olympic Games, India’s perfomance has been dismal to say the least. The inability of India to produce athletes even with the existence of over a billion people is, to many, very confusing. To others, it is a reason to ridicule and laugh. To me, an Indian, it is shameful.

If a country like Thailand can win 19 Olympic medals over the last 32 years and if a tiny nation like New Zealand, which has a population of about 4 million - 1/250th of India’s can win 77 Olympic medals over the last 100 years then why, has India, the 7th largest country in the world, only won 19 Olympic medals in its entire Olympic history?

I was as perplexed as you might be. So I dug into the World Wide Web looking for a few answers. Neeta Lal’s article, “India’s Failure of Olympic Proportions”, glowed in the dark. In her article, she puts forward strong arguments for India’s stagnation in the sports world. India’s annual sports budget is US$280 million which is fairly dismal in comparison to China’s US$2 billion. Also, it is highly likely that a decent chunk of the US$280 million gets lost in the “administrative purposes” that India is infamous for. The lack of reasonable sporting facilities and sport coaches is overshadowed by the fact that official Olympic training in India begins only a few months before the Olympics. The absence of a long-term sports plan and the presence of an arguably corrupt system do not help produce Olympic medals either. The gold medalist, Abhinav Bindra trained in Germany with a Swiss coach for many months before the Olympics, far away from India. The other past winners and current contenders such as Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Vishwanathan Anand and Sania Mirza are all products of processes that do not involve the Indian sports administration.

A sport that does is cricket. Yes, it is a joy to see India do decently at cricket and the unity that it harvests among the hearts of Indians is indeed heart-warming. But, I find it hard to consider cricket a major world sport as barely fifteen countries play it professionally and only ten countries play it at its highest level. So, does partial domination in an arguably minor sport count as a “sporting achievement” for the 2nd most populated country in the world? I really don’t think so.

I feel that the problem lies deep within the Indian education system. Only 48% of the public schools in India have a playground. In addition to that, the mindset of most Indian parents revolves around education and careers that are not related to sports. Cricket, obviously, is excluded and is a career that is considered a million-dollar lottery. Indian teachers outdo Indian parents by piling excessive pressure on students to perform in examinations.If it is not parents or teachers, then it is the absence of sporting facilities that cater to the stagnation of the sporting talent in India. This, in essence, destroys any hope of achievement.

Amidst all this hopelessness, there are some efforts being made by the private industry to provide hope for the future. Courtesy of events such as the Olympics, people are realizing that there is a dire need for change in the sports system of India. K P Gaekwad, a former National-level Indian athlete, has started an academy to give potential athletes an opportunity to develop their abilities. AIFF and Bharati have united to form the National Football Development Program that aims to strengthen the soccer scene in India. Efforts are being made, but more needs to be done, especially by the Indian government.

When Abhinav Bindra won the ever-elusive gold for India, there was a public frenzy that swept through India. The Indian NEWS channels covered his success in great detail and there were reports from all over the country as to how proud Indians were. Numerous blogs showed their respect towards his achievement. There was this brief moment of pride among Indians – “at least we outdid our immediate South Asian neighbors”.

Indians love it when an underdog topples his supposed superiors but at the same time they condemn the youth for laying excessive emphasis on sports. This hypocritical approach is what needs to be corrected. There are one billion people saluting Abhinav Bindra today. 41% of them are the youth. There is ample potential to turn the tables around. Chuck the red tape, the corruption and the bureaucracy. The Olympics is not going to be stopped anytime soon in the near future. India still has time to make a significant impact in the sports world, and it will. I just hope it happens sooner than later.

Footnotes:

Link: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH08Df03.html

As mentioned in: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH08Df03.html

Link: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JH08Df03.html

As stated in: http://youthportal.gov.in/

Photo Courtesy: BollywoodSargam.com

8 Comments »

VJ said:

“Wrestler Sushil Kumar bagged India’s second individual medal and for the first time since 1956, enabled India to secure two gold medals at a single Olympics.”

Did we really bag 2 gold medals ? I thought it was 2 bronze and a single gold.

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# 5 September 2008 at 12:54 am

Anish (author) said:

Yes, there is a typo/factual error - I am going to get it corrected ASAP. Thanks for bringing it to my notice.

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# 5 September 2008 at 2:05 am

Aditya said:

I understand where you’re coming from, but a couple more things to note

1. Getting medals at the Olympics has no economic incentive, but it does provide for ’soft power’. The fact that China got more gold medals than the reigning superpower, the USA, goes a long way in further inflating the already-inflated Chinese ego.

2. I don’t feel too bad that India has done bad at the Olympics. Firstly, there aren’t too many sports played in the Games that we Indians care about anyways. Secondly, even if cricket was in the Olympics, an Olympic medal in Cricket will never mean as much as winning the World Cup.

3. Under no circumstances should one take anything away from those who won medals for India. If they were games we were already good at, a medal would just be a reconfirmation of our dominance of the sport. But the medals have come in events which India was never a world power in. We should definitely be proud of the three medals we got.

4. When a country can’t feed its population, I doubt it can give them training facilities to be able to compete globally. Heck, even if we spent on facilities, what would we feed them?

5. Doing good at the Olympics needs effort in a determined and sustained manner. It takes years of invesment and planning before results will reflect the effort. An interesting thing to note is that China is currently training 60,000 baseball coaches to play cricket. They want to be in the World Cup by 2019 and have also started manufacturing equipment. (Imagine made in China cricket bats!)

I might be restating some of your points, but what I am trying to say is that there is nothing to be ashamed of at India’s dismal performance over the last century. Instead, one should concentrate on measures to rectify the situation. Cheers.

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# 5 September 2008 at 12:30 pm

Ravi said:

Who cares? My point is that no one in India does. India is a democratic country albeit a very weird one. Thus, that means incentive to perform and excel must be found internally in an environment that you correctly state to be oppressive to such goals. We cannot compare ourselves to China primarily because China is a party-based dictatorship that, because the power of the state that can be utilized by a few, can quickly fund any activity it wants without public retribution. The same cannot be said of India. Frankly, I prefer the ineptitude of a democracy over the tyranny of a party. Who cares about winning medals when your achievement is automatically declared to be that of the state? Where is the personal pride of an athlete? Athletes in China are treated like machines. At least in India, we treat our people perhaps not respectfully but at least like living beings with free will. But I sort of agree. It would be nice to see more Indians on the pedestal. I just hope it doesn’t come at an excessive cost.

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# 5 September 2008 at 1:06 pm

Simrat S said:

Bhindra’s gold medal does not impoly a collective Indian dominance in the sport. I doubt government facilities had the slightest to do with his success. In interviews, it is plain to see that the chap is from a khata peeta Punjabi family with tons of money. He himself has claimed that he used to practice in an Olympic-size shooting range which the family invested in due the son’s exceptional talents. how many athletes or even sports prodigies in India can afford personal facilties like that?

Also, the point here is not to downplay India’s achievement but there is only so long you can pat your own back. Yes, it is true that we do not have the infrastructure to even feed the poor but imagine how many less hungry there will be if they could develop alternative talents. teach a man to fish theory …

also, as soon as a glitch in the system is detected if we just point to another glitch as the reasoning as justification to do nothing, all we’ll be left with are problems.

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# 5 September 2008 at 1:34 pm

neon said:

Amit Varma of India Uncut had a very interesting take on this topic as well: http://indiauncut.com/iublog/article/india-doesnt-need-olympic-pride/

I do not think it is fair to compare India’s performances at the Olympics with that of China’s. Looking to be the best is admirable but China’s obsession with it is insane. They really are making machines out of athletes.

In India, there is no incentive for an athlete to continue with the sport that he loves (even Cricket doesn’t guarantee you much of a future unless you make it to the national or an ipl team). Maybe instead of throwing money at Bindra for his gold medal, they could use that money to build academies for track and field and other Olympic sports. The government should decide on how it is going to felicitate athletic champions and be consistent. It just angers me that state governments give lakhs of rupees to Bindra for one gold medal. Just think how many more medals we could win if only they would use some of that money to develop future athletes.

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# 5 September 2008 at 2:14 pm

Nimisha said:

While I agree with the others in saying that India’s performance is nothing to be ashamed of, it is true that Indians could do with laying a little more emphasis on sports, and encouraging youngsters to pursue careers outside of business, engineering and medicine. If talent is recognized and developed, India’s performance at most international sporting events would definitely improve.

However, the fact that the US and China won a gazillion medals at the Olympics hardly makes a difference; I doubt if an average person could name even 10 of the winners. On the other hand, Bindra’s achievement has inspired thousands - and not just with regard to sports.

That may not help with the statistics, but it still counts.

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# 6 September 2008 at 12:30 am

Bharath Narayanan said:

Hey - nice article there on a topic that has been touched on more than once. The thing is that this whole conundrum is a vicious cycle. Teachers and parents do not encourage children to take up sports other than cricket because there is no scope for economic well being in them. Now it is true that its about dreams and passions but at the end of the day in a place like India where there is a job shortage and a massive influx of educated youth into the system, one cannot afford to lapse even a tad bit in their academics. The root cause is something that is often not mentioned - presence of social security. If each person knew that whatever dreams he pursued, he would have something that would ensure a stable future, the scene would change drastically.

For starters more people would pursue sports of their choice.
This would lead to a greater awareness in that sport along with acknowledgment by governing bodies. In turn better facilities and leagues will be created and there is a snowballing effect if you know what i mean.

However for this to be realized we need to first ensure that there is social security like in Western countries. This comes through job respect i.e. where there is nothing such as a menial job and a number of other factors not least of which is population.

On the whole, I echo the sentiments of .. i guess nearly everyone .. that it would be great if we could give sports a greater chunk of our expenditure and time. In fact the creation of more sporting leagues on a serious basis would create thousands of jobs which itself could boost our economy (creating grounds, managing them , scouting, finance etc.)

The funny thing is that people like Vijay Mallya and the lot end up investing in “foreign” entities like formula one and ofcourse everyone knows about the recent bid to take over a premier league team. it would be great for them to actually invest in simple things like the National Football League or the basket ball league. Sigh if only some samaritan can come and put this to effect !