Opinion Games we win
If everyone wants to be a great sportsperson,we need to eliminate malnutrition.
The feel good feeling of the World Cup was sobered by my friend Bibek Debroy pointing out that sports performance is correlated with Per capita GDP growth and we have reached a stage where some of these great outcomes are in a sense expected and a part of our destiny and not just the super efforts,which of course are not to be discounted. This is true for our cricketers,wrestlers,boxers and sharp shooters. I have another take on this.
GDP growth means many things. In our case it is from the mid seventies and the eighties of the last century that we start growing fast,first at around five percent,then six and now at eight percent annual. But this is also the period that our grain consumption goes up from around 160 kgs per person to more than 175 kgs per year if you take 5 year averages to iron out weather fluctuations. Now as the late P.N.Haksar pointed out it is only if food goes down the gullet that the body juices start flowing and many things become possible. As per person income levels go up you start eating more of dairy products,meat and eggs and fruits and vegetables and less grain and this happens both for the rich and the poor since food is not air conditioners. If everybody wants to be a great sports person,more of us are able to do it for natural capabilities are distributed equally in a billion person society. Now we have as it were the energy.
To me it has never been a mystery that the girls from Kerala were champs. They eat well and had a great health service. More girls survived and prospered. This will happen on a larger scale. Again around twenty two percent of our population is malnourished. Once we have an effective food security plan of the kind that Sonia Gandhi is pushing another fifth of our population will be added to the base from which the champs will come. We will then be an irresistible force. Until then celebrate while we go there. When the girls join in family will be more for as the poster says women hold up half of the sky. Vande Mataram as Rehman sings.
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