Why is India such a poor Olympics performer?

Sep 01, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
One athlete from the US has won more medals than an entire country with 1.25 billion people! A paltry bronze medal for Sakshi Malikon August 17, 2016, during the wrestling event of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games put India on the podium. Malik won bronze, Russia’s Valeria Koblova’s took silver and Japan’s Kaori Icho obtained gold. Later, Pusarla Venkata Sindhu won silver in the women’s badminton. India has managed just one gold medal since 1980, when shooter Abhinav Bindra became the first individual to win gold for his country at the 10 meter air rifle event in 2008. The country’s previous gold medals, eight between 1928- 1980, were all in field hockey.
Perhaps, the most outstanding performance came from Dipa Karmakar, the first Indian female gymnast at the Olympics who finished fourth at the women’s vault gymnastics event, having to face Simone Biles (Gold) and Aly Raisman (USA) and Maria Paseka (Silver) (Russia).
At every Olympic Games, rivals China and Russia walk away with multiple gold medals. For fans in India— the world’s second most populous nation and one of the fastest growing economies – this is disappointing. To put India’s historic performance in context, Michael Phelps has won as many medals on his own as Team India has managed since 1900. Hopes were high running into the Rio Olympics after the country snagged six medals in London in 2012 and sent its largest ever contingent – over 100 athletes- to this year’s event. The pitiful 2 medals are therefore woefully embarrassing.
For a nation which boasts immense human diversity, with limbs and muscles of all sizes, race or genetic characteristics a valid explanation is needed. High poverty levels aren’t a sufficient reason, seeing as other countries with low levels of per-capita income, such as Kenya and Jamaica, consistently fare better. The major problem is India does not have a sports culture, except for cricket. Indian athletes who have achieved international success are exceptions rather than products of the country’s sports system. Indeed, education tends be the highest priority for the average Indian household instead of extra-curricular activities such as sports. A popular Hindi saying roughly translates to “if you study hard you will live like a king but if you play sports you will ruin your life.”
Indians, over the decades, have been mostly pre-occupied climbing the socio-economic ladder. Consequently, the pool of talent created at the local community, school and university levels, leaves much to be desired both in terms of size and quality. Moreover, there’s little support for those who display athletic prowess. Scarce public investible resources have eluded sports. This is further compounded by misallocation, lack of transparency, poor asset management and an absence of a framework for measuring impact of public spending. This is unlikely to change, despite the government’s best intentions. It is a mind-set which only time —perhaps another century — will erase. There are scholarships and endowments for athletes that guarantee a basic minimum standard of living, but this system is fraught with bureaucratic red tape, political interference, conflicts of interest and corruption.
Sporting associations itself are no strangers to scandals. In 2012, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) was suspended from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for electing leaders with pending criminal charges, forcing Indian athletes to compete at the Sochi Winter Games under the IOC flag instead of the Indian banner.
But perhaps more than anything else, omnipresent inequality may be the driver behind national underperformance. The root problem is one of limited and ineffective participation, arising from the difficulties in gaining access to serious sports training. Much of the country’s talent remains undetected; it takes a degree of privilege to be a serious competitor.
Jamaica—a country that the World Bank calls one of the slowest growing in the developing world—could serve for inspiration for Prime Minister Modi. Following heavy investment in organized and informal infrastructure for athletics, it now prides itself on being home to the world’s fastest man and woman this year. In the long run Indians need to absorb into their psyche that education and sports can live side by side, and as the country is considered one of the top economic powers in the world…it can also become one of the champions in the Olympics.
Leyland Chitlall Roopnaraine

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