During his speech from the Red Fort on India’s 78th Independence Day, Prime Minister (PM) Modi congratulated our athletes for their performance at the Paris Olympics. That was gracious of him. Those who had won medals in the Paris Olympics were even seated right in front, even though it meant relegating Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition, to the fifth row when he should normally be seated in the first. But the powers that be thought that honoring our winning athletes was more important.
These are tokenistic gestures, yet the truth is that for all the importance given to our Olympians, in reality our threshold for satisfaction in sports is unacceptably low. In the Paris Olympics, India won one silver, five bronzes and no gold. For a country of over 140 crores, this is an abysmal performance. It translates to one medal for almost 25 crore people! In the total medal tally, we stood as low as 71st out of 84 participating countries. The United States had the highest medal tally of 126, including 30 gold. China was second, with a tally of 96, but with as many golds. Among developing countries, Brazil won 20 medals, and Kenya 11. Since 1900, when the Olympics began, India has won a total of only 41 medals. While public felicitations and special seating arrangements maybe important, the real priority is to seriously review the foundational reasons for our continuously sub-par performance in the Olympics.
Firstly, in spite of marginal improvements, our sports infrastructure is grossly inadequate. By 2008, China had 3,000 sports institutes; in 2024, we have merely 150, of which only 26 are owned by the government or public sector undertakings. Sporting talent, to be honed to the exacting level of the Olympics, needs training of the highest quality when children are still young. Yet, our first National Sports University was established in Imphal, Manipur, as late as 2018. The National Sports Development Code was adopted in 2017, but even now all sports federations have not complied with it.
Secondly, the quality of training in our sports institutes is poor and riddled with bureaucratic red tape. That is why, affluent athletes like Abhinav Bindra chose to train at home. The sports ministry has received only a marginal increase of Rs 45 crores since the last Olympics in 2020. By contrast, in China, by 2023, the total number of sports venues nationwide had reached a whopping 4.59 million. Our flagship Khelo India programme has grown, but the allocation of money under it for sports infrastructure defies logic. For instance, Gujarat with a population of less than eight crores gets 426.13 crores, while Bihar with over 13 crore people gets Rs 20.34 crores! The highest allocation — Rs 438.3 crores — was made to UP, but it won no medals.
Thirdly, the nexus between politics and sports is glaringly inefficient. Brij Bhushan Sharan, a powerful BJP MP, accused of sexually harassing and intimidating women wrestlers, considered the Wrestling Federation of India as his personal fiefdom. When wrestling superstar Vinesh Phogat and other leading wrestlers protested against him by sitting on dharna for weeks at Jantar Mantar, they were manhandled by the police. All this while, the central government remained for too long a mute — even antagonistic — observer. The irony is that when Brij Bhushan resigned, in the ensuing elections for presidentship of the Federation, his close aide, Sanjay Singh won, and it was Brij Bhushan who was triumphantly garlanded and paraded. In such circumstances, it is a miracle that Vinesh Phogat not only qualified for the Olympics but managed to reach the finals, losing the gold only due to being 100 grams overweight for her category.
Many other sport federations are also headed by politicians. Praful Patel, of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), was the president of the All-India Football Federation for four successive terms. The tennis federation is helmed by BJP MP Anil Jain. Abhay Singh Chautala, son of former Haryana chief minister (CM) O.P. Chautala, lorded over the boxing federation for three continuous terms. Himanta Biswa Sarma, CM of Assam, heads the badminton federation. Former BJP MP, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, broke all records in chairing the archery federation for four decades! What have these politicians done in improving our sports performance? I would venture to say very, very little, even though their political heft could have helped the sports they were dealing with. The fact is that for too long now our sports federations have mostly become political sinecures, consuming budgets for the perks of office bearers, and overridden by lobbying, intrigue and factionalism, that has nothing to do with sports.
Fourthly, our obsession with cricket has led to the neglect of other sports. The Board of Cricket Control of India (BCC!), whose general secretary is Amit Shah’s son, Jay Shah, is among the wealthiest sport leagues globally. Its earnings in 2023 were Rs 18,700 crores. By contrast, the apex body of our national sport, the Hockey Federation, earned only Rs 86.7 crores in 2023. Our top cricket players are superstars — and rightly so — earning millions in ad endorsements and fees, while overshadowed by cricket, our prowess in other sports has been stunted. Not surprisingly, in the 32 sports events at Paris, we could compete in only 16. China competed in 30.
Lastly, our catchment area for identifying and nurturing sports talent is too narrow and mostly urban. Haryana, with two per cent of the country’s population and 1.6 per cent of its total territory, accounted for 36 per cent of our medals. Kudos to Haryana, but have we done enough to locate talent in other states? We are a large country, with youngsters interested in the right opportunity for sports scattered across the country. It is nothing short of criminal negligence to deny them that opportunity because successive governments, while euphoric over our sporadic wins, have done nothing systemic to harness this talent.
The fact is that in sports too little makes us too happy, reminding me of the couplet: Kitne dinon se pyaase honge yaaron socho tau/Shabnam ka qatra bhi jinko dariya lagta hai (Think, friends, for how long they have been thirsting for water/Who consider even a dewdrop to be a river).
