NEW DELHI // As the Rio Olympics moves towards a close, India is going through the periodic bout of soul-searching that occurs once every four years: Why is a country with 1.2 billion people unable to win more medals than tiny Armenia or impoverished Cuba?
At close of play, India boasted a mere two medals from the Games: a bronze in women’s freestyle wrestling for Sakshi Malik, and a silver for P. V. Sindhu in the women’s badminton. Ranked 71 in the medals table, India lagged behind Armenia, which won four medals, and Cuba, with nine.
The tally was a crushing disappointment after the last Olympics in London in 2012, when India took five medals—its best-ever haul. It also shattered the optimism of the government, which had expected its athletes to bring home 10-14 medals.
“What happens on a particular day is something none of us can predict,” Injeti Srinivas, the director general of the Sports Authority of India (SAI), said in March. “But we should achieve this target.”
None of the medal contenders—in field hockey, archery, shooting, boxing, tennis or steeplechase, the sports upon which SAI had pinned its hopes—came through.
In India, the headlines on the sports pages bristle with words like “dejection,” “despair,” “disappointment” and “humiliation.” When Ms Malik picked up India’s first medal, social media and television channels exerted themselves to portray the triumph as a slim silver lining to a gigantic cloud.
The disappointment feels fresh and acute every time, but the story—of inadequate resources, mismanagement and official apathy—is an old one.
In total, the budget of India’s sports ministry stands, this year, at 15.92 billion rupee (Dh871m). Even if this money were expertly managed and allocated, it would prove meagre, said Abhinav Bindra, an Indian shooter.
“Each medal costs the UK £5.5 million” or roughly 480 million rupees (Dh26.25m), Mr Bindra, who won a gold in the Beijing Games in 2008 but finished fourth this year, said in a tweet on Tuesday. “That’s the sort of investment needed. Let’s not expect much until we put systems in place at home.”
A parliamentary committee report tabled last week found that India spends only 0.03 rupees per capita per day on developing sports. In comparison, the United States spends 22 rupees (Dh1.2), the UK spends 0.50 rupees, (Dh0.03)and Jamaica spends 0.18 rupees (0.01).
“Investment is directly proportional to return,” K Arumugam, who runs the non-profit Hockey Citizens Group to spread field hockey through India, said. “The government needs to take two steps. One is to increase the outlay, and the second is a policy framework to, for instance make sports an essential part of the curriculum in schools and colleges. The second is as essential as the first.”
To make things worse, India’s funds for sports continue to be vulnerable to corruption and badly planned expenditure.
During the 2010 Commonwealth Games held in Delhi, for example, allegations of corruption were rife. Suresh Kalmadi, the chair of the organising committee, was arrested and convicted for awarding contracts for excessively high amounts to chosen firms, in return for kickbacks. Millions of dollars leaked out of the Games’ budget in this manner.
Not coincidentally, India’s medal successes have come in sports where the state is minimally involved.
Mr Bindra, who hails from a wealthy family, funded his own training. Ms Sindhu, the badminton star, attended the Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy in Hyderabad. The academy is named after Mr Gopichand, a retired badminton champion who started this private coaching centre.
Even in wrestling, India’s energy comes from the sport’s “very, very long and unbroken history” as a people’s pastime in India, said Rudraneil Sengupta.
Mr Sengupta, who wrote “Enter the Dangal,” a new book about Indian wrestling named after the arena in which traditional wrestling bouts happen, said that, in India’s northern states, “it will be hard to find a village that does not have at least one ‘akhada’ or wrestling school.”
Despite this strong grassroots infrastructure, though, wrestling still suffers from the same deficiencies as other Indian sports. Mr Sengupta points to “a clueless national wrestling federation. Like all other Olympic sports federations in the country, this too is run by politicians.”
The stories of the excesses of these politicians and their entourages during the Rio Olympics have been especially controversial.
Vijay Goel, India’s sports minister, earned an official reprimand from the Olympics organisers for entering athlete-only areas, bringing cronies with no accreditation to events with him, quarrelling with staff, and perpetual rudeness. Four officials from the state of Haryana have flown business class to Rio, only to spend their time sightseeing—a junket that cost the exchequer 10 million rupees(Dh550.000)
One of the doctors with the Indian contingent—who happens to be the son of the Indian Olympic Association vice-president—has been prescribing an over-the-counter painkiller for most injuries, according to media reports.
“The medical support is so outdated it’s farcical. There is a wide lack of knowledge—about modern exercise protocols, recovery methods, sports science,” Mr Sengupta said.
“There is no accountability for sporting performance,” he added. “All of this contributes to a lack of technical and scientific knowledge which is very difficult to overcome with skill and grit alone.”
SSubramanian@thenational.ae
