At the very least, a special ‘Task Force’ to boost sports in India, as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a meeting of the Union council of ministers on Friday, acknowledges that the country’s performance at Rio was disappointing. No amount of outrage over the caustic (and admitedly insensitive) tweets — notably by writer Shobhaa De and British TV anchor Piers Morgan — can obscure the fact that we have fared badly.
There is obviously a great sense of pride in the achievements of P.V. Sindhu, Sakshi Malik and Dipa Karmakar. Also, that 119 athletes had in fact qualified for the Olympics is not something to be sniffed at.
But this must be contextualised to get a truer picture of the Rio campaign. Only 13 out of 85 athletes — leaving aside the two hockey teams — could match or better their previous best performances.
Not surprisingly, the Sports Authority of India’s projection that the country would win between 12-18 medals (according to CNN-News18) was hit for a six.
In fact, India finished with just two medals, one less than in Beijing in 2008 and four fewer than in the 2012 London Games. These unedifying statistics suggest that — at least in Olympic disciplines — India has been moribund.
The sooner this is accepted without pointless rancour, the better. Unless a fresh agenda which aims at lifting Indian sports from the bootstraps, out of the morass of mediocrity is in place soon, we will continue to languish at the bottom.
The ‘Task Force’ mooted by the PM could be the trigger to effect this change. But it must go beyond just lip service for there have been similar experiments in the past with little success. In the early 1980s, the All Indian Council For Sports was formed under the stewardship of Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw. This was dissolved in 1984 since very few of the proposals made by the AICS got a move on.
The AICS was revived in July 2002 with Vijay Malhotra as chairman (and given the rank of a cabinet minister), but the council could achieve little as it was entrenched in politics rather than focusing on improving sports.
In my opinion, a sports ministry is an indulgence, a hindrance and should be done away with. Successive sports ministers have not been able to provide either the vision or momentum to help India make the breakthrough. For sports, democracy politics can be a stumbling block to progress. Effort should be made to make development and the pursuit of excellence agnostic to political parties and ideologies.
For instance, Tory Prime Minister John Major plugged sports into Great Britain’s National Lottery after the 1996 when the results showed a hugely disappointing one gold medal and 15 medals overall.
This policy survived changes in government. Great Britain is one of two countries (Azerbaijan the other) that has shown a growth in number of medals in every Olympics since 2000. At Rio, they dislodged China from the no. 2 spot in gold medals.
I have advocated for a while now that a National Sports Council replace the sports ministry. Call it a ‘Task Force’ if you will. The nomenclature is unimportant. What and how it does things that is crucial.
The Task Force must take up from a robust national sports vision. At the bottom end, it must expand the outreach for sports in collaboration with the education, health, HRD ministries and the community. At the top, it must aim to produce and fine tune elite athletes.
The supply line from bottom to top will be sustained by spotting talent early, proper nurturing and then making superb facilities — coaching, sports medicine et al — available at the apex.
The Task Force will also be the interface with sports federations, involved in designing competitions, setting up centres of excellence, establishing benchmarks that must be met.
Auditing performance of federations and athletes should be unforgiving as the Task Force would be responsible for disbursing funds provided by the government. This would mean that the body is greatly empowered.
Success will depend on the developmental programme that emerges, and how diligently this is executed. And this depends on who makes up the Task Force.
Without the right people, it can fizzle out into cronyism, nepotism, and consequently certain mediocrity. In short, it would be back to square one.
