TWO LESS FOR COMFORT
LOOKING AHEAD After London’s haul, India came home with only two medals from Rio. Here’s a look at a roadmap for the coming years
There is this intangible thing called sports culture. It’s not about the amount of money spent – if it was then the West Asian countries would not have been importing athletes. It’s also not just about overall sporting infrastructure or Kenya would not end 15th. Possibly, it’s got more to do with just how many people show up for local sport. For instance there are black people across the world but somehow Jamaica produces the best sprinters. An NYT article attributes this to the fact that their annual athletics meet is the most attended event and how athletics is so huge in the educational system.
Parents in India turn up for the academic evaluation by teachers, they needn’t when the kid plays inter-school sport. Our cities are concrete jungles, playgrounds aren’t a priority. It’s not something chimerical, it needs to be built.
For India to breed Olympians, we have to have a huge change in mindset — respect our athletes more and not just pander to the winners. We have to get our achievers involved to nurture the future. Now, they take their laurels and scoot from the bog that’s our sports administration.
To be the best you have to get the best. That costs money. We don’t invest in the best brains as the thought that a coach would get $10,000 (about `6.7 lakh) per month sends our sanctioning authorities into convulsions. Access to the best equipment stays a fantasy as lobbies ensure imports stay expensive. The emphasis on ‘Make in India’ is superb but by the time our sports goods industry reaches world levels, a couple of more Games would have passed.
When it comes to sport, we are a knee-jerk nation with a decided proclivity towards hyperbole. A case in point is the Khel Ratna for Dipa Karmakar. Her first good performance at the world stage came this April and she followed that up with a credible fourth at Rio. But the babu-dominated committee that decides these awards chose to go with popular sentiment. Fourth place finishes must be applauded, they needn’t be excessively celebrated. When mobdriven decisions are taken, we risk anarchy and that’s just the state that our sports awards are in. Your correspondent was in the selection committee last year and realised there is little that an independent voice from outside can achieve.
Take for instance the Arjuna criteria. It’s a convoluted nightmare. Take the ceremony where athletes’ parents are relegated to the back while babus and their families sit in the front two rows. It just kind of puts the priorities right out there. A fine mess it’s going to be this time when there are four Khel Ratna awards. What better way to belittle the nation’s highest sporting honour than by handing out the most ever in a year. If the pinnacle of our recognition of sports achievements is so skewed, the rot below is but logical.
The government’s Target Olympic Podium scheme has been a spectacular flop. But the same heads that came up with this and other such bureaucratese that suffocates Indian sport will continue to meander along bumbling at their jobs. Will SAI and its bigwigs be held accountable? Names can be taken but then this is a collective failure. We as a nation have failed. But if people at the helm get away with underperformance there can be no progress.
Indian sports administrators are bad. They prefer preservation rather than assertion. Take the case of mixed doubles in tennis. Leander Paes and Sania Mirza may have been a better combination and would have certainly got in as an Asian exempt but administrators went with Mirza’s wishes and not tennis logic.
That all our administrators are too thick skinned to resign is known. That they can’t be sacked is a fact as they are not accountable. India can change all of this by radically altering the way sport is governed. China did, didn’t it? But nothing happens as the political class is so heavily a part of this set up.
The administrators compel athletes to kowtow or else their funds are stopped. They learn that you have to be subservient to babus and even the press. The ji-hazuri (yes sir) derides our best of the killer instinct. Later, when confronted by the aggression of the world, they baulk.
Coaches are the bedrock of a sporting nation. In our case it’s usually the profession of those who can’t do anything else. The SAI is the parking ground for political appointments. All schools have sports periods but do our school instructors have a basic blueprint for grooming athletes? The huge gap in knowledge at the grassroots ensures our players begin to figure what’s required far too late in their careers.
Then there is this entire clamour to get things right in time for Tokyo. The lack of perspective is astounding. As experts say, it takes at least ten years of deliberate, consistent, perfect practice to make a champion. That’s been proven for excellence across human activity and not just sport.
The bus for Tokyo has already left, we may hasten and try and hang to the tailpipe. If we are to look at Olympic glory, think 2024, think 2028.
But then knee-jerk is what we do, not planning, not showing vision.