How to Bring Olympic Glory to India

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	It’s not that India cannot win an Olympic gold, it is just that India does not want it badly enough.

To begin with, let’s all start dreaming. Nurture a dream, stroke a desire and ignite the passion for winning. And when a whole nation of over a billion people really craves it, there’s no power on earth that can come in the way. The very yearning for the blue ribbon shall transform our lives. Why? Because that hunger will show in our priorities, in our actions, in our talk, in our discussions, in our newspa-pers, and above all, in our long- and short-term atten-tion. It will reflect in the dreams and aspirations of the common man, and the priorities of corporatedom. It will find expression in a politician’s speech and his promises, as he will undoubtedly speak the language the people want to hear. It will also perhaps lead to the institution of commissions and committees to ponder upon the problems and prospects of sports. In short, it will fire the imagination of the whole nation. When a thinking nation wants a champion crick-et team, one can see that desire manifest in the buzz all around—from a modest roadside tea stall to the hal-lowed corridors of Parliament. That’s the power of a national obsession. When a nation gripes and protests, when people take out processions over the composi-tion of the national team, the stakes increase. And the ultimate beneficiary is the sport. Similarly, if we begin to yearn for the coveted prize, all hopes shall surely transform into a rewarding reality.

More often than not, sportsmen in India come from lower middle class families, where the means are so meagre that the family needs to make some sacri-fices to even afford quality sports gear for their aspir-ing sportsman. Our sportsmen, therefore, brave not only the performance pressure on the field but adver-sities off the field too. Unless we find ways of giving aspiring talent a sense of financial security, amateur sports will not be taken seriously.

It is rare to find middle class families encourag-ing their children to take up sports as a career. And the root cause is financial insecurity. Pride is dear to all, irrespective of their background, and ironically, social status and pride stem from one’s financial standing. Amateur sportsmen live in fear of a form of social ostracism because their financial bases are not covered. This insecurity shatters the morale of a performing sportsman, and he cannot then pursue his chosen dis-cipline with the single-minded devotion that is nec- essary to achieve excellence.

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Both the government and corporate conglomer-ates need to pitch in with more support. I remember, during the tenure of a former sports minister, a cash reward of Rs 20 lakh was announced for every sports-man who won a medal at the international level. No wonder, India bagged medals by the bag at the Commonwealth, the Asian Games and a host of other international events.

The other thing that will bring about this trans-formation is respect for excellence in sports. And there’s no better place to begin than in schools. I don’t know of a single school that can proudly boast of a kid doing the 100 metres dash in under 11 seconds. On the other hand, look at the number of schools that make a song and dance about their 90 per cent scor-ers in Board exams. This must change. I wonder why sport is not included as a subject in school curricu-lums. That’s where the transformation can really begin. Schools will have to start nurturing and nour-ishing sporting talent early on. When teachers and par-ents take pride in young talent, when they make their exceptionally talented young wards feel special, cham-pions will bloom by the dozens. The State needs to pitch in as well: if a school encourages sports as a cur-ricular subject, it should be duly rewarded by the state or district administration. If incentives trickle down from the Centre to the states, and from the states to the districts, down to the school level, the way it hap-pens in China, our medal count will be enviable too. State-supported sports facilities are the next big thing. We do not need scores of Olympic stadiums all over the country. Nor do we need Games Villages in fancy metropolises. What we need is to create a sys-tem for identifying special talent early—at the district level, at the school level. Showcase facilities in a few metropolitan centres do not serve that purpose at all. Rather, the presence of a small sports centre in every district is what we need—a centre that provides access and support to the children, youth and practising sportsmen of the area.

But for any of this to happen, we need to want it enough. We have to ask ourselves if we really want a transformation of the current mindset. If the nation wants an Olympic gold, it has to unitedly desire it. It is not that India cannot win, it is just that India does not want to win. Not enough. We don’t have to pitch our ambitions too high rightaway; to start with, we just need to start paying attention to our sportsmen and our sports institutions. This will set in motion the transformation we need, and the rest will follow.

The author won India’s first individual Olympic silver medal in the double trap shooting event, Athens 2004

(As told to Sourav Roy)

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