Why Does India Perform So Badly At The Olympics?
Posted: 08 Aug 2016 05:43 AM PDT
As the Rio Olympics begin to move into second gear, I have been pondering on the chances that the Indian Olympic Team will win. On the positive side, India is sending its largest team ever of athletes to an Olympic Game this year, with over 100 competitors making the trip to Rio. However, when contrasted with Australia, whose team numbers over 400, one can see how far back the Indian olympic sport is. The figure becomes even more astonishing when one reflects on the fact that the population of Australia is 23 million compared with India’s which is 1300 million, a ratio of 56:1!
Another positive is, relatively speaking, the Indian team did quite well at the London Olympics in 2012 finishing up with a ‘record’ six, so the expectation is to do even better at Rio 2016. Moreover, in terms of the sports in which India has something of a strength, namely, hockey, tennis, badminton, wrestling and archery, their current form is good, and so there is room for some optimism that they will home individual and team medals.
We know that India is a young country that is still struggling to provide for the basic needs of the population, and therefore, it is reasonable not to expect too much in terms of the Olympics, which is, after all, really a platform for elite sports with big money backing. Nonetheless, India has been taking part in the Olympics since 1900, but somewhat embarrassingly, in over 116 years before she has only won 26 medals! This makes for 1 medal per 383 million people, which compares abysmally even when compared with other developing countries like Kenya and Ghana, which have much better performance than India in this respect.
So why does the world’s 2nd most populous country and the ‘largest democracy’, struggle so badly in the Olympics, and except for Cricket, in world sports more generally? I would like to offer three broad reasons:
First is the fact that along with being the world’s largest so called ‘democracy’, India, as reported in the Forbes list 2016, remains one of the world’s most corrupt countries. This results in the gross mismanagement of resources already allocated for sports in India and also high levels of nepotism and patronage when it comes to selection. So put simply, the best available talent is not represented in the team.
Secondly, the national cultural mindset of India is stuck in a time warp in which participating in sports is seen as a low level activity. This is a legacy of a pre-history where certainly sports men – not women who were confined to domestic spheres – were seen in the same light as itinerant street performers and belonging to ‘low castes’. Even today, amongst the Indian middle class, the suggestion that their children may shun careers in the professions to become sportsmen and women is met with derision. The truth is that anything to do with public performance is seen as a ‘disrespectful’ vocation.
The third reason is really to do with the direction of world sports which is increasingly becoming controlled by big businesses and the media. To be successful, one needs financial backing and quite simply, as far as India is concerned, there is not really an appetite to back Olympic sports. That is, in contrast to cricket, which we all know India has become a world leader, it is the big money from the IPL along with wall-to-wall media exposure that has captured the hearts and minds of the Indians for cricket. In this regard, only by emulating this can India Olympic sports have a chance.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, as the Chinese have demonstrated. But for success, India will need to develop a national strategy. They need a huge infrastructure development and a massive shift in cultural attitudes towards sports and performance. If that doesn’t work, then perhaps the embarrassment and humiliation of languishing at the bottom of the medals table may jolt the nation into acting.