Why Is That India Is So Poor
In The Olympics Everytime
It was the year 1968. I was only NINE years of age then. There was
a , as if the entire nation had died which I had felt on that day. The reason
was the Indian Hockey team for the FIRST time in the annals of Olympic Hockey,
had failed to make it to the last stage of the Olympics Hockey at Mexico.
India had lost to Australia by 1-2 in the semis in the sudden death / extra
time in that Olympics.
The mental state and the physicality were such that it appeared to me that the individuals who were the adults ten, were the SKELETONS moving around and on the road. It appeared that there was nothing in them . Such was the gloom and the shock.
That was for the first time I had heard about Olympics and that
was the first occasion that my mind became very eager to know all about the
Olympics. At that small age being a student of Class - IV , then, i stated to gather all informations about the Olympics, and from 1968 to 2021, there have been 13 Olympics, and everytime India has been the story for the WORLD to talk about it's boisterous population, and it story of being a disaster in Olympics. From 1968 to about 2021 we have won only EIGHTEEN medals in the
Olympics in which there has been two GOLD, one in Hockey in 1980 and then
Abhinav Bindra winning it in 2008 . However after then it has been a sorry state of affairs always and we do not see with full confidence any Indian winning the Gold at all. They start only to deceive in the final stage and in the quarters and the classical examples are the shooters and the archers. We have had the horrendous stories in examples of the shooters and the archers which are very hard to describe.
Every four years since then I would expect India to win atleast
three medals at every Olympics but to my
surprise I always found India winning neither
or nil or either at times some. So much so that on many an occasion, havans and the pooja's were performed for India and her sports certanity of medals, to win the medal, a quest that started from 1960 when on a national scale the pooja was performed for Milkha Singh to win the Gold at Rome but even that did not help.
I always would fathom and reason out WHY
ARE WE SO POOR WHEN IT COMES TO INTERNATIONAL EVENTS WHRE THE GAMES AND SPORTS
ARE OF IMPORTANCE.
After many a years of search, research and analysis this is what I
find the reasons for.
We ourselves make a MOCKERY
of us when it comes the moment of BIG
-:
India sure punches well below its weight when it comes to sports.
We are at first, NOT mentally prepared for the same, secondly we send those
athletes and sportsman who are atleast FOUR years behind the clock , as the one’s
send with qualifying marks are those who qualify as per the last Olympics
standard of the fourth place of timing and by then the WORLD produces the WORLD RECORD HOLDERS and beaters
, and then when it comes to the most important moment, we somehow fail to hold ourselves
for everything at the crucial moment and loose to our opponents who are not
even heard of.
The International Sports Events -:: An Exercise In
Despair
At every Olympic Games, rivals China and the United State of
America, and Russia walk away with
multiple gold medals. For fans in India—one of the world’s most populous
nations and fastest growing economies—the event is an exercise in despair.
Pic - :: Major Dhyanchand - Three Of The Eight Hockey Gold Were His Deeds And Magic
India has managed just one gold medal since 1980, on an individual basis, when shooter Abhinav
Bindra became the first individual to win gold for his country at
the 10 meter air rifle event in 2008. The country’s previous gold medals, eight
between 1928-1980, were all in field hockey. It was because of Major Dhyanchand that THREE of the EIGHT Golds in Hockey landed at this earth, on the portion, which we call it as India.
There are instance where an Olympian has won EIGHT medals in
one single Olympics and the answer is Michael
Phelp, to equalize EIGHT GOLD in Olympic Hockey won by India from 1928
to 1956 and again in 1964 and 1980, the last time when India won the GOLD in
Hockey.
To put India’s historic performance in context, Michael Phelps has
won as many medals on his own as Team India has managed since 1900. In the
Olympics between 2008 to 2016 ie, in the three Olympics that Michael Phelp
participated in THREE
Olympics, he won TWENTY – FOUR Golds , which the Analyst of the
International Sports say that to win 24
GOLD medal India will need more than a 1200 years incase if it has to trench and reach, that figure .One might LAUGH at hearing this
but then this is the earliest that the Indians can do it if really they want to
do that ?.
Simple Logic :: 3000 Years
Would Be required
The
Olympics, the modern started in 1896 and this is 2021, it is 125 years and
India so far has won only one gold, if that is the ratio taken then reaching
the figure of Michael Phelp would be 125 years X24 Gold = 3000 years. That
again is a simple but a correct logic.
Granted, the 2021 Games are still on-going. So far, Weightlifting star
Meerabai Chhanu has won the silver medal at the women’s singles competition onJuly
24th 2021. But it is a question of conjecture about when the next
medal from this Olympics would come.
Hopes were high running into the Rio Olympics after the country
snagged six medals in London in 2012 and sent its largest ever contingent to
this year’s event. The shallow medals haul had , therefore, sparked debate on
the likely reasons.
The nation boasts immense human diversity, with limbs and muscles
of all sizes, so race or genetic characteristics aren’t a valid explanation,
said Anirudh Krishna, professor at Duke University, and co-author of a 2008
paper called ‘ Why do some countries win more Olympic medals? ’
No Sporting Culture, No
Structure To Raise And Mould Sportsstars-:
High poverty levels aren’t a sufficient reason either, seeing as
other countries with low levels of per-capita income, such as Kenya and
Jamaica, consistently fare better, he added.
“ India does not have a sports culture,” explained Keepe Keino , a
leading Kenyan Olympian who was a world famous mid distance runner .
Indian athletes who have achieved international success are exceptions rather
than products of the country’s sports system, he said.
“ Unless
there is a synergized sports culture you will never win a string of medals. A
fundamental overhaul is needed and urgently so.” This was the topmost remarks
that Keepe Keino had made when he was at India in 1985 on an invitation from
the TATAS .
Indeed, education tends be the highest priority for the average
Indian household instead of extra-curricular activities such as sports. A
popular Hindi saying roughly translates to “ if you study hard you will live
like a king but if you play sports you will ruin your life “.
“ Indians, over the decades, have been mostly pre-occupied
climbing the socio-economic ladder. Consequently, the pool of talent created at
the local community, school and university levels, leaves much to be desired
both in terms of size and quality,” said Arun Navaratna, senior economist at
Australia New Zealand Bank (ANZ) .
Moreover, there’s little support for those who display athletic
prowess.
“ Scarce public investible resources have eluded sports. This is
further compounded by misallocation, lack of transparency, poor asset
management and an absence of a framework for measuring impact of public
spending. This is unlikely to change, despite the government’s best
intentions,” Navaratna said.
Bureaucracy,
Red-Tapism, and Corruption at every level of Sports Hinders Indian Sports
At every level of Indian system of Sports, there are corruption
which starts from the very early stage of selecting the toddlers at every
places to train them at the academics. Many a candidate chosen at many
academies were taken because they could bribe the selectors to get into the
academy. An early entry in an academy helps them with some kind of proper
clothing, food, housing, transportation, and medical facilities. Somehow, if
selected for the toddlers event then from there they think of a Government job
abd a better security.The real one’s who are there in the making to mould
themselves into something great are let of and the talent goes into the drain.
This is not in every part of the world.
There
are scholarships and endowments for athletes that guarantee a basic minimum
standard of living, but this system is fraught with bureaucratic red tape,
political interference, conflicts of interest and corruption, he noted.
Sporting associations itself are no strangers to scandals.
In 2012, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) was suspended from
the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for electing leaders with pending
criminal charges, forcing Indian athletes to compete at the Sochi Winter Games
under the IOC flag instead of the Indian banner. CNBC’s calls and emails to the
IOA went unanswered.
Early this year, a National Sports Ethics Commission Bill was
introduced in the Indian parliament in an attempt to order to improve the
overall integrity of sporting culture. Nothing good ever since then has really
happened to uplift the sports in the country except laying a paper on the floor
of the house. The one’s who can bring about some wonders knowing Sports are
never even thought of by the Government to be given a chance through the rajya
sabha to become a Sports Minister and the one’s who have become the Sports
Minister of India are a BIG HOLLOW HEAD to do the job. There lies the
difference.
Some meanwhile blame the selection of Olympic sports itself. But
perhaps more than anything else, omnipresent inequality may be the driver
behind national underperformance.
“ The
root problem, as I see it, is one of limited and ineffective participation,
arising from the difficulties in gaining access to [serious sports training],”
and that is what I feel and I have to say. . “ Much of the country’s talent
remains undetected; it takes a degree of privilege to be a serious competitor.”
South Korea, a country of only 50 million people, consistently
ranks ahead of India because almost every Korean knows what the Olympic Games
are and has a chance to attend a high school, this is what was told to me by an
Korean Official when I was at New Delhi to cover the Asiad 1982 on behalf and
for my organization “ THE HITAVADA ” which is published from Nagpur .
“ Helping individuals advance to the limits of their potential in
diverse arenas—including sports—is the development strategy of the future,”
said the Korean, , who noted India’s
performance in relation to its human potential consistently ranks at the bottom
of world rankings.
Jamaica—a country that the World Bank calls one of the slowest
growing in the developing world—could serve for inspiration for Modi. Look into
Osain Bolt, look into Marylene Ootey, the infamous Women short sprinter or even look
into Sri-Lanka which won a Gold in the track and the Field event in the 1948
Olympics and again in the Sydney Olympics through Ms Susanthika Jayasinghe who won a 100 metres Bronze ,
beside a Silver Medal in the World Cup Athletics Competition. Following heavy investment in
organized and informal infrastructure for athletics, Jamaica, it now prides itself on being home to
the world’s fastest man and woman for
many a years between 1990 to 1997 , and ofcourse not to forget the tightening of the bolts which Osain Bolt did it with style in his customary manner . Did he ever use a JACK, SPANNER or anything else is something which needs to be found out ?.
While Modi’s administration may be constrained on the expenditure
front, it could certainly do more to define a scheme and partially fund
public-private partnerships for sports infrastructure and services, such as
coaching or event management, according to my own self study and according to
the interest that the good and rich organization have for themselves in Sports.
.
Administering fiscal incentives would also help, such as tax
exemptions for earnings from sports or reduction in import duties on expensive
sports equipment,and this I have been saying right from 1981 since the start of
my Sports Journalism days. .
“ India
needs to invest in the long term, not expecting miracles at the touch of a
button,”
I had met the
Chinese national Badminton coach at Pune in 1981 when Prakash Padukone had
beaten the WORLD-FAMOUS Chinese shuttler Han-Jian in three very hard and tight
set to win the Grand Prix event then. He was very reserved to speak when when
he told me that China had about 50 as good as players in Badminton of the equal
quality of Han-Jian , in the reserves at that point of a time, I was taken by surprise. No doubt that China kept on
winning all the major Badminton tourney between 1981 to 1991 with gay abandon and
ease.
Chine after
the Beijing Olympics did come with a blue paper on the Asian countries and it’s
march toward the games and sports of the Asian countries and it found many a
points which simply belittles the Indian sports in reality.
The Chinese
state media believe India’s lack of success at the Olympics is because of the
lack of infrastructure, poor health, poverty, girls not being allowed to
participate in sports and boys being coaxed into becoming doctors and engineers.
The Chinese state media has
listed out the reasons it believes are behind the poor show. These are: lack of
infrastructure, poor health, poverty, girls not being allowed to participate in
sports, boys being coaxed into becoming doctors and engineers, the
popularity of cricket over other sports, India’s fading hockey
glory and lack of information about the Olympics in rural areas.
In a spate of commentaries over the same
, the state-run media has explained to readers the reasons for India’s repeated
failures at the world’s greatest sports event – there was no mockery or
chest-thumping, just plain reasoning.
“India has
1,200,000,000 people, and is the second populous country following China. But
India’s getting scarce medals in the Olympic Games. Why? Counting by
population, India ranks the last in Olympic medal number, India got only six
medals in the 2012 Olympics, while none were gold,”
“Counting the recent three (2004 Athens, 2008 Beijing, 2012 London) Olympics, if the medals were given equally to the whole population, India ranks last.”
The Gap Between The Impoverish And Filthy Rich Makes It A Reason
For Thoughts-::
It added: “ Large gap between rich and
poor has made it hard for the poor people even to make a living, let along
saving the energy for sports practice. Adding that the government has only
little investment on the sports infrastructure, the mass sports and competitive
sports are both lagging behind in India.”
The lack of a sports culture in India
has contributed to the lack of Olympic success, according to a piece on the
website Chinanews.com, which had published all these findings and reports in
2008 after the Olympics..
“ The Indian culture has hindered local
sports development. Most families want their children to become doctors or
accountants. Sports talents would be persuaded by family and even neighbours,
stopping them from taking part in high-level competitions ,”
“ Besides, a large portion of the
population is from lower castes and such people hardly get chance for education
and suffer from lack of sufficient nutrition.” Information about the Olympics in
rural areas of India is key to success at the event, wrote the official website
ChinaPolitics.org.
“ Researchers have investigated in rural
areas in Karnataka and Rajasthan. They asked villagers about the best job they
ever heard of in the past decade. In Rajasthan, the answer of more than 300
villagers showed software engineer, architecture engineer, doctor, lawyer and
in some villages teachers or soldiers. There was not much difference in
Karnataka, which had a better economy,” the website said.
There was no mention of sports, forget
Olympics.
CRICKET :: Everything But “
NOTHING ” In Sports No Dearth Of “ PAGAN ” In India
“
Cricket is the national sport of India. Indians love it so much that it has
been religion-like. Cricket is one of the most BOGUS sports but the Indians made it to be a THING that needs to be worshipped like we worship some Gods everyday as we believe in it. In India, those who don’t like cricket could be regarded as “ PAGAN ” . Because of this,
many young people don’t have the courage to receive other sports training. They do not take to other sports in most of the cases. Indians love cricket and are NOT , proficient at it, and sadly, cricket is not among
the Olympic events, Indians can’t win a gold medal with it,” was Toutiao.com’s succinct
explanation. Even if a cricket tournaments is held at Olympics there was no
guarantee that India will always win a medal as good as GOLD in it observed the
website agency.
The reasons behind China’s success at
the Olympics :
The commentaries did not specify but possibly the reasons are
the exact opposite of why India fails.
That is more than enough to
describe it in one line .
NO EXXAGERATION, PLEASE
That sums up it and that is all .....
Regards and THANKS
Pics
Shyamal Bhattacharjee
Mr Shyamal Bhattacharjee, the author was born at West Chirimiri Colliery at District Surguja, Chattisgarh on July 6th 1959 He received his early education at Carmel Convent School Bishrampur and later at Christ Church Boys' Higher Secondary School at Jabalpur. He later joined Hislop College at Nagpur and completed his graduation in Science and he also added a degree in B A thereafter. He joined the HITAVADA, a leading dailies of Central India at Nagpur as a Sub-Editor ( Sports ) but gave up to complete his MBA in 1984 He thereafter added a Diploma In Export Management. He has authored THREE books namely Notable Quotes and Noble Thought published by Pustak Mahal in 2001 Indian Cricket : Faces That Changed It published by Manas Publications in 2009 and Essential Of Office Management published by NBCA, Kolkatta in 2012. He has a experience of about 35 years in Marketing .
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