No doubt it is quite creditable that India was at her best at the Olympics Games Tokyo 2020 in terms of the medals won (1 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze). But the most remarkable feature has been the first ever athletics gold in 121 years of participation in the Olympics through the efforts of Neeraj Chopra in javelin throw. Incidentally, India fielded its largest ever contingent (127 sportspersons) in Tokyo.
While saluting those who have won medals, what is called for is introspection as to why a country that is poised to overtake the population of China by the time the 2024 Paris Olympics comes around, ranks in the late 40s in medals tally. At the same time, China is way ahead and almost tops the medals register. Another Asian country, Japan, is close behind China.
Why this depressing state of affairs? What has India done in the field of sports in order to excel at the world level for the over 70 years that she has been independent, in comparison to what most other countries have achieved during the same period? Nothing — and that is an understatement.
India’s approach to sports is flawed because the accent is on winning a medal here and there, in some discipline or the other. Emphasis has to be on the evolution and development of a health culture through sporting activities from the kindergarten level. There has to be mass participation in sports right from the earliest stage in the life of an individual.
Sports should be blended with academics in such a way as to make the former an integral part of the overall school experience. Sports has to be taken into consideration the way different subjects are laid down in academics; the same way as learning is made compulsory, and on a daily basis like any other facet of the school curriculum. There has to be mandatory emphasis on children taking up sports to promote a positive health culture.
The scenario should be that if a student does not take part or drops out of the sports programme then it has to be akin to dropping out of the curriculum altogether. That is the only way in which a sports culture can be inculcated and a mass sports movement is developed. This will give rise to a scenario where a number of children will compete against each other — and this will raise the quality of competition.
Gradually, the bar at which competition occurs keeps rising through such a group deeply involved in sports. Perhaps an analogy from cricket can be drawn; after the 1983 world cup win, and tremendous TV coverage, there has been a mass movement and quite a few cricketers have emerged from rural/mofussil areas since then. That has meant a healthy bench strength.
In a nursery, we do not sow a single seed and expect that to grow into a good plant. We sow a whole lot of seeds and expect to obtain some healthy plants to reap the harvest. Nurseries are meant to nurture a host of plants. Similarly, we should have a surfeit of children coming to a high level from which we have talented sports persons emerging. This is how we go about to have a mass movement towards health culture.
This calls for a complete overhaul of the existing school infrastructure itself. It is hard to expect that single-teacher schools where teachers are absent most of the time, and the students on rolls turn up at the midday meal time, if such an arrangement exists, can provide a proper infrastructure for sports facilities wherein a suitable playground and other equipment are essential.
Since most of our schools in rural India are of the above kind, improvement in the sports arena is unlikely in the foreseeable future — i.e. that is, till we provide the basic infrastructure in all schools across the country. If we are able to provide a high-level infrastructure for sports in the next five years or so, then we can expect a better performance in two decades’ time. That is, about 25 years from now; say 2045 or thereabouts. Till then we have to be satisfied with what medals we have been winning since the 1920 Antwerp Games.
A major drawback has been that almost our entire educational system, barring some exceptions, has been in a bad shape and to blend sports with a defective educational organisation is well-nigh impossible. But it is pertinent to point out that three important sectors that have been more or less neglected all through in terms of budget allocation have to be brought into focus; the three sectors are school education, health and sports. There has to be a complete overhaul here and the sooner we begin the better it is.
Sending sports persons overseas for training is again a wrong approach. World-level competition should happen within India itself. All nations that win medals in clutches like the United States, China, Japan, Great Britain, have evolved a system where within the country competition is at the world-level standard. They do not pick a handful of individuals and send them abroad for training.
A lack of world-level competition when these athletes get back home after overseas training gets them back to where they started, as there is no sustained competition within the country. Once they are at the top and the best in the country, they think they will overcome all opposition at the world level competitions. But that does not come about.
Unfortunately, what has been observed in India is that once the qualification mark is attained, complacency sets in. Just blaming the athletes is not correct; officials and others too are to blame. Having politicians as ministers of sports is certainly not the way to go about. It is hard to say ‘forgive them for they do not know what they are doing’ and stay quiet. As tax payers we are entitled to seek accountability.
MA Kalam is Visiting Professor, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, and was also a qualified cricket umpire for the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association.
Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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