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Poor show at Rio

Kashmir Times. Dated: 8/25/2016 1:20:52 PM

Time for introspection and overhauling the sports policy, even the very way sports is looked at

Two of India's daughters may have given the nation a reason to rejoice at the fag end of the just concluded Rio Olympics after an abysmally over all poor performance. Both PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik deserve a heroes welcome and Dipa Karmakar who finished fourth needs to get due recognition. But the far more vital question is why a country of over one billion, one that claims its greatness as a burgeoning economic power and a vibrant democracy, is unable to fare well in sports. In years, India has not been much noticeable in Olympics, winning at the most handful of medals. Instead of steadily improving, India's medal tally has further plummeted. In 2012, India finished 55th with 6 medals - 2 silver and 4 bronze, which had been a slight improvement over the past performances of 2008 with three medals including a gold and in 2004, it was just one silver medal. In 2000 and 1996, India got a bronze medal each and before that India's performance had been nothing much to write about barring in 1952 when it won a bronze for wrestling and 2 silvers were bagged by Norman Pritchard for athletics in 1900. India's high point of glory was 2012 when the Indian sports contingent brought back 6 medals. The figures are a reflection of the poor quality of sports and call for a serious introspection. Post the Rio Olympics, stories have begun tumbling out of the cupboard about the lack of training and about the problem with the size of the contingent which had more officials than it had sportspersons, the ill-trained doctors, chosen not on basis of merit but on pure grounds of favouritism and nepotism, and the embarrassment that sports minister Vijay Goel caused for India by entering the restricted area. In a corruption riddled country, a huge sum of money that could be spent on the welfare and training of sports persons or providing them better infrastructure is often squandered on maintaining the luxurious holidays of the officials and ministers which serve no purpose. The present BJP government in its first ever budget did try to attach some significance to sports as the allocation for the sports and youth affairs ministry for 2014-2015 saw a rise of Rs.561.24 crore, a 46.5 percent hike from the previous year. A significant portion of this allocation, Rs 400 crore was to be spent on development of Indian sports, including upgradation of sports infrastructure, a sports university in Manipur and training for athletes. But the higher the increase in budget, the greater the chances of it being wastefully spent. It is no hidden secret that India's sports federations have become money minting machines for politically influential people and there is need to overhaul and restructure these with only sportspersons of reckoning as heads and members.
India's rising gymnast has hit the nail on the head by drawing comparisons with other countries leading the medals tally when she said that the sportspersons in many countries start training for Olympics more than a year before the games while in India, the training begins only in the last few months which is insufficient. This is a telling comment on the lack of seriousness with respect to sports and on the poor over all planning. India should take a cue from Great Britain which sprung a surprise improving its overall medals tally and finishing second in the medals tally rank to USA, where a change in policy altered the rules of the game. Britain's leading sportspersons with potential are now full time professionals who focus on their training throughout the year. Far from such a scenario, India's sportspersons neither have access to good sports infrastructure nor good dietary supplements. The problem is not just at the top level of sports arena. The problem exists right at the very grassroots level. India with a burgeoning population has no dearth of talent which remains unnoticed. Potentially talented people are noticed only once they manage to perform well in state level games or nationals. They are not picked up at the basic school level. The very system needs a complete overhaul with focus on creation of talent pool and ensuring best of infrastructure and coaches as well as investing money to ensure healthy diet and best of training for the sportspersons. Also, the very culture of sports needs to be popularized in keeping with the spirit of sports not as some kind of a jingoistic battle that sports often gets reduced to.