India Sports Hurdles & Future

A certain level of euphoria and joy over winning a few medals is natural in a country starved of sporting achievements. In particular, politicians, media and many on SM screamed the Men’s Hockey Bronze now makes India “world-beaters” and a revival of the game. Undoubtedly, it’s a very creditable performance. The Women’s team too performed creditably, finishing fourth.

In the light of some decent performances in Hockey there is a certain euphoria in India. One hopes that leads to a mass interest and lucrative careers. This also brought to light that after Sahara had to pull out of hockey sponsorship in 2018, it was Odisha and CM Naveen Patnaik who nurtured the game and that brought these results around. Unable to stomach Patnaik running away with all the credit, Lipstick-chaser PM Modi quickly announced changing the name of Rajiv Khel Ratna to Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna. Some of the tiniest countries in the world have won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics – Cuba, Fiji, Bermuda, New Zealand, Bahamas etc. It would be dishonest not to admit that India is a sporting failure. There are many reasons for it – excessive govt involvement, corruption, mismanagement of funding, total lack of innovation.

What is innovation in sports? This is a small story about Peter Ueberroth, the man who headed the Olympics committee for Los Angeles 1984. Until 1984, Olympics were funded by govts in full and was mostly a loss-making enterprise. For the first time in 1984, Ueberroth recruited sponsors across the US through various states and district organisations. The LA Olympics became fully self-funded and a financial success. At the end of it, LA made a surplus of $250 Mn (660 mn today) which was ploughed back into sports in the US. Competitive sport is a performance endeavour and not an “activity” endeavour. The GOI repeatedly does more of the same things incrementally with zero innovation and thus India stagnates in sports and laments every Olympic failure. And then we get PMs like Modi who seek to shine their own face with any success that our athletes get. Unless this changes, India will continue to languish at the bottom of international sports.

In terms of size only China comes close to India. The next biggest country is USA. While USA has topped the medals tally for almost a century, the Chinese have come to dominate the recent Olympics since 1992. India’s failure in sports is a long-standing problem and other than empty chest-thumping jingoism by Ministers, the PM and others there is nothing to show in terms of results. Here are some of the illnesses in the Indian system and why politicians are a nuisance to performance challenges:

China created a sports ministry in 1952 when it was as poor or poorer than India. Their harsh discipline and regimen have resulted in their topping the gold medals list often. India cannot run a harsh regimen like them but can certainly do with a lot of discipline in demanding performance and excellence. India had a sports department which became the sports ministry in 1982 with the Asiad event that year. It’s now 40 years but we have little to show as results in the Olympics although we have improved our performances in the Asian games and Commonwealth which have lesser competition. The last CWG held in India in 2010 had phenomenal financial corruption for which India is famous.

The country that most dominates the world sports, USA, does not have any sports ministry or minister. It is their internal sports systems, competition structure and private enterprise that nurtures the winners. US govts also do not directly fund any sporting activities or manage sporting facilities but in many cases offer financial aid or tax exemptions. Their state govts provide funding to the universities and schools which includes sporting activities too. Take a look at all the events that India participated in at Tokyo2020:

That is 18 events but some of them are hardly a regular sport in India but rather a hobby of personal pursuit. Equestrian, Fencing, Golf, Judo, Rowing, Sailing are not even watched or known for any major tournaments in India. Track & Field (T&F) athletics includes number of events – Running, Long Jump, High Jump, ShotPut, Javelin, Discus, Pole Vault and so on. India’s participation depends on some competitor coming up in some event in T&F events. In most competitions India simply wasn’t good enough to even qualify. It becomes worse when the delusional PM of a country that has consistently failed behaves as if the contingent is the greatest performer in the world. Modi is the epitome of brainlessness, empty worthless lipstick and delusional nonsense:

How many parents would be proud if their kids got 48% marks or simply failed? That’s what Modi thinks India is. At the time of writing this we have some 7 medals and nothing else to brag about. For a country of 1.38 Bn that is poor and nothing to be proud about. Indians are not that dumb that they need to be consoled with the fakery of Modi. Indians can absorb blunt truths and accept that our sports domain is in shambles and needs new thinking and not the nonsense of Modi-lipstick. To top it all, Modi is going to call the whole contingent to the Red Fort on August 15 to celebrate their “success”. The same Red Fort that he couldn’t protect from Khalistani vandals. Only a delusional PM can live in such “Mungerilal” activity. Modi simply doesn’t have anything to show so imagines rubbing shoulders with Bollywoodias or athletes will shine his face. Modi likes to lecture and sermonize everyone. He is now the Grandmother for the whole country and every segment of performance. He lectured the Olympics team too in a video conference before they left:

A general message of best wishes would do when the team is going for the Olympics but typically the biggest Lipstick peddler in India wants to spend most of his time in lecturing and sermonizing as if being the PM now makes him Norman Vincent Peale or the “Mor Bapu” that he is. He should be doing a daily “Katha” with old ladies at temples if he is that bored than sermonizing everyone else. His main intention is to bask in the borrowed shine of a few stars that the Olympic team has:

For all the nonsensical drama and lipstick of Modi, he set up a task force after the Rio2016 fiasco to set our sports systems right. It has been over 4 years now and no one knows who comprises that task force, what its work was and what the outcome was. In 2016 too, Modi danced with the athletes before they left to borrow a little media shine from them:

As an answer to all these sporting problems, the GOI came up with another moronic plan called “Khelo India”. You can look up the site and what the plan intends to do. You will find grandiose nonsense of Modi written all over it. It has everything from infrastructure to rural to women to financial assistance to everything. It also has a vague, ambiguous plan of turning India into a “Global sporting powerhouse”. Sports results can be measured and quantified. How the hell do you quantify “global sporting powerhouse”? It’s another Mungerilal dream. There is only one small thing missing – the measurable outcomes and the time frame.

The govt doesn’t know whether to adopt the China model where govt is involved in everything or the US model where the govt is not involved in sporting operations. Sometime back, Kiren Rijiju, the former Sports Minister, announced opening up 1000 Khelo centres in India. Wonder what they will do! Khelo India is nothing more than “Jugaad”. A placebo solution with no defined results for a major sporting failure. And for all the noise, the Khelo budget for 2021-22 (around 2500 crores) has been slashed (understandably because of the Covid situation) but the amount allocated is peanuts for an aspirational “global power house”:

It is not that we don’t know what the problem is. We all know and the govt knows too. Unless the govt gets out of sports management and stops playing Grandmother like Modi does, India will never progress. So, what are the few things that the govt can do? These are my suggestions and non-governmental experts can offer more ideas:

Many past Indian athletes are languishing in poverty. They have become hawkers or are into menial jobs. India is unable to find jobs for all the academic graduates that are “manufactured” from our education system. Therefore, sports must become a lucrative professional career. That should be the goal and not merely winning medals. If turning sports into careers becomes the goal then medal-winning automatically happens as internal competition widens and becomes tougher. Some of the richest sportsmen in the US are baseball and American football players. American football is not even an Olympic event.

There are 250mn Association soccer players in the world. Not all of them play in premier leagues. England alone has 20 teams in the Premier league football and 72 overall. Almost all countries have a professional football league and it offers the players global opportunities. The teams are run like limited companies just as IPL teams partly are. India must aim to make sports a professional career. Olympic medals are just a small part of the overall sporting culture of a country. Some of the rich and best performing countries at Tokyo2020 are not offering the highest bonus for medals. But their athletes do have reasonable earnings from regular competitions within their country. Take China's investment in sports. It hopes to make Sports a $773Bn industry employing 3 million people in a few years. For Tokyo Olympics alone China had spent over $1Bn:

It is the potential and promise of decent earnings and a lucrative career that drove many boys and girls across rural India to Cricket. Many of the men don’t get selected for Tests or ODIs but make good money in IPL. Govts must fund schools and universities to ensure athletes are financially looked after by corporate-adoption of teams. That is the only way forward. Govt involvement should be limited only to funding infrastructure and regulating flow of funds and sponsorships. There is no need for repeated motivational speeches from Modi or Kovind. PMs and Presidents come and go. Their speeches cannot win medals. A lucrative professional career in sports is the biggest motivator as seen in Cricket.

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