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Journalism of Courage
If the Olympic movement is a metaphor for globalisation, then India — accounting for a sixth of humanity — has failed to turn up. Somehow, the silver medal it won as an undivided colonial administration in the Paris Games in 1900 turned into a paltry bronze by Sydney 2000, and only just got upgraded to another silver in Athens — the first individual silver medal won by an Indian athlete in any games. A shocking performance by any standard with far reaching consequences for India’s ability to project soft-power and, importantly, its self regard. If left unaddressed, it will disproportionately affect India’s claim to global power.
Globalisation has indelibly altered the syntax of international power, where tank counts and GDP data have long since ceased, if they ever were, to be reliable indicators of how power is distributed amongst nations. In this changed world, whether they realise it or not, the reward increasingly goes to those successful in winning global mind-share and raising their currency through their globally resonant cultural production and symbolic events.
Star performers or athletic or cultural excellence concentrates global attention. It has the power to personalise and turn the unfamiliar into the personal — objects on maps into human subjects with whom we can empathise with or root for. Economic flows and agenda-setting power often follow. Sport, predictably, has emerged as a platform for real and symbolic competition and the Olympic medals table has become an unofficial barometer for national prestige.
In this new economy of regard, sporting cultures often do well. Australia, where sport and sportiness is a defining feature of national identity, stands to benefit in the decades ahead from its enhanced prestige as a successful Olympic host, but also the leader among non-micro states in medals per citizen. Its sporting success, vastly out of proportion with its size, raises its regard and mind-share across the world, which has an indelible effect on its ability to attract investment, people and interest.
After Athens, hundreds of column inches have been dedicated to unravelling Indian under-performance. Some take the form of wounded lament, but the question most frequently posed goes: how can a continent-sized country of more than a billion, and arguably poised on the verge of super-powerdom, produce so few world class athletes?
The immediate responses include a paucity of an international sporting tradition. As a world onto itself, competitive horizons have been intra-regional and national — a relatively low bar by global standards. This, combined with a lack of world-class sports infrastructure, its growing middle-classes, who can afford the non-instrumental luxury of competitive sport, crowded into cities with few facilities, sponsorship options and little cultural support for amateur athletes, or, at least those not competing for a role in national cricket — India’s first national obsession.
Class, race, caste, religion, history and India’s beguiling lattice work of human division undoubtedly play a role. Aestheticised physical pursuits are not part of the recent tradition of the ruling elites. However, the success of Indian athletes in the diaspora, from medal winning US gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj to Fijian Vijay Singh, now the world’s top golfer, has put paid to the idea, fashionable amongst the same crowd that once held forth on the supposedly irredeemable ‘Hindu rate of growth’, that there is something unsporting in the sub-continental DNA, a ‘Hindu way of sport’ as it were.
Olympic success is not rocket science. The application of concerted resources, coaching, sponsorship and selection, over several Olympic cycles, under the umbrella of a far-sighted national committee usually yields results. Indian leaders cannot afford to leave this appalling record unaddressed. Indeed, there are signs they are beginning to get the picture.
Official India’s competitive focus is set on ensuring India joins the high table of international regard alongside the US, Russia, united Europe and particularly China, where the communist tradition of international sporting investment as a means of conveying soft-power has paid off handsomely. In this instance, India’s ‘China Syndrome’ might ensure official bureaucracies and turgid apathies be set aside.
The writer is a researcher at the London School of Economics
