A ten medal tally predicted for India by the London-based Price- Waterhouse Coopers prior to the commencement of the Athens Olympiad 2004 is a realistic target for Beijing 2008. India has the demography, talent and resources to realise this modest goal four years hence. The decks need to be cleared right now for a coordinated and intelligent national effort. Summiya Yasmeen reports

A day ahead of the closing ceremony of the 28th Olympic Games which concluded in Athens on August 29, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee declared that the “Athens Olympics were the Asian Games” and that “what we have seen here in Athens is the awakening of Asia”. Simultaneously in its issue dated August 30, the best-selling Time magazine featured a cover story titled ‘Asia’s Golden Games’ confirming the emergence of the hitherto also-ran nations of Asia as the ascendant stars of the sporting world.

Both Rogge and Time were dazzled by the olympian achievements of China (32 gold, 17 silver and 14 bronze), Japan (16-10-12), South Korea (9-12-9), and Thailand (3-1-4). However despite being the world’s second most populous nation, India (pop. 1.2 billion) made an insignificant contribution to the Asian blitzkrieg in Athens. India’s embarrassing lone medal tally at the historic 28th Olympiad which attracted 16,000 athletes and team officials representing 201 nations and was telecast into 180 million Indian homes caused much anger and heart-burn especially in the nation’s 50,000 newspapers and periodicals.

For the nation’s editorial pundits, the bitterest pill at the end of the 17-day sports extravaganza was the spectacular success of neighbouring People’s Republic of China (PRC) with whom India shares a 3,440 km disputed border in the north-east (which provoked a brief war in 1962 in which India was humiliatingly defeated) and deep ideological differences. Both nations are of comparable size in terms of population and landmass and each believes that its intellectual capability and development model is superior. Against this competitive backdrop the grossly disproportionate medals tally of 63:1 has generated seething anger and indignation about the quality of sports education and training being provided to young India.

Lamented a lead editorial in The Times of India (August 19): “Since 1900, our sportspersons have won only three individual bronze medals. India’s claim over the two silvers that Norman Pritchard won in Paris 1900 is disputed since the UK claims the Calcutta-born sprinter as its man. A gold has remained elusive even in hockey, which India claims as its national game, since Moscow 1980… There is little to dream for in Indian sports…” The same day the lead editorial in The Hindu said: “…That a country like Cuba, with a population of just over 11 million, went into the Athens Games with a tally of 137 Olympic medals should give us an idea of what can be achieved if the focus and priorities are right. A (sports) budgetary allocation of Rs.466 crore is hopelessly inadequate for a country of India’s size and population…”

Though teachers and educationists have known it all along, rather belatedly post independence India’s all-powerful politicians are beginning to make the connection between the design of the education system and track and field achievement. “We need to prepare our sportspersons from their school days to win medals. The main reason for India’s poor performance is that the country doesn’t have a sports culture. Sports education should be an integral part of the curriculum in each school and it should go well beyond the standard physical training class. If we want to improve our Athens tally of a solitary medal we must start working towards Beijing 2008 right now. China started preparing for the Athens Games ten years ago,” says Union sports minister Sunil Dutt, a Bollywood actor turned politician. Dutt admits that of the meagre Rs.466 crore annual sports outlay of the Central government, Rs.200 crore is spent on salaries of officials and bureaucrats. “Indian sport is starved of funding. Against this the annual sports budget of China is $1 billion or Rs.4,600 crore,” he adds.

The lament that sports education is considered separate and distinct from the education process and/ or is regarded a frivolous activity is shared by D.K. Tandon, the Delhi-based director (technical) of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), and former director of the Association of Indian Universities. “India’s Athens 2004 debacle is a timely wake up call. We need to introspect whether we have a system which supports sports or a sporting culture. How much seriousness do we attach to sports? Practically none. We woke up at the last minute, hired sub-standard coaches who wouldn’t get jobs anywhere else as we couldn’t afford the best, and set off for Athens. The disaster at Athens is a manifestation of a deeper problem — the lack of an organised talent discovery and development system. The lesson of Athens 2004 is that we need to devise a long term strategy to intensify sports education at the school and college levels This requires more playgrounds, competent trainers and sports managers.”

Indeed, the need to devise a formal strategic plan for Beijing 2008 has become more pressing after India’s Athens 2004 medals drought which has provoked derisive comment around the world (see Time August 23). In this connection there is growing admiration within the academic community for the detailed strategic planning — initiated over a decade ago — of the PRC government which has transformed China into an Olympic super-power enabling it to dislodge Russia from its traditional second ranking in the medals tally in the recently concluded olympiad.

Under a strategic sportspersons development plan formulated in 1994 codenamed the 119 Project (a reference to the number of Olympic gold medals up for grabs in aquatic and track and field events) the Chinese Olympic Committee selected an estimated 400,000 children aged six and above with sports potential and sent them to 3,000 state-of-the-art specialist sports schools across the country to be trained for Athens 2004. Following continuous competition inter se, China’s 407-strong Athens 2004 Olympics squad was selected. And it wowed the global audience of 3 billion who followed Athens 2004 on television. Now the publicly articulated goal of the PRC is to dislodge the US from its traditional premier position on the scoreboard in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games which it will host.

“The most valuable lesson of China’s amazing success in Athens 2004 is that a long-term national sports strategy is necessary for success in olympiads. In India intensive training of selected olympians begins six months before the start of the games when the athletes and teams are sent abroad and foreign coaches are hired. This is too short a period for our sportspersons trained using 1950s-dated coaching manuals to raise their performance standards. In recent years, global sport has gone hi-tech and involves sophisticated training equipment, well-qualified coaches, psychologists and medical experts who advise on how to beat dope tests. Indian athletes don’t have access to such facilities. Not only are sports budgets pathetically meagre, most of it is consumed in administrative expenses rather than training of olympians. The few international star athletes which India has produced have succeeded in spite — not because of — the nation’s education and sports administration systems,” says Ashish Ballal, former India hockey star goal-keeper who has represented the country in over 275 internationals, and is currently a commercial manager of the public sector Indian Airlines. Ballal is doing his bit for his sport. Together with former India captain Dhanraj Pillay, he has recently (2001) promoted the Dhanraj-Ballal Hockey Academy in Bangalore with the avowed objective of putting India back on the field hockey map of the world.

Among former olympians and India’s all-too-few sportspersons of near-international standard, the opinion is unanimous that the stranglehold of politicians, career bureaucrats and ill-qualified administrators over the country’s numerous sports associations has to be broken. Astonishingly India had the dubious distinction of sending a larger contingent of officials (227) than competitors (75) to Athens 2004.

This was inevitable given that almost all sports federations and associations in the country are headed by active or former politicians and bureaucrats in honorary (i.e. unpaid) capacities. However these honorary positions offer a wide array of perquisites of office such as free travel, upscale hotel accommodation,daily allowances and foreign invitations. Hence they are perfect havens for out-of-office politicians, retired bureaucrats, policemen and service officers. For example Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi has headed the Indian Olympic Association and the Amateur Athletics Federation of India for almost two decades. Likewise Union minister of water resources Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi has chaired the Indian Football Association for over a decade, while the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra has headed the Indian Archery Association for a record 28 years. Guess what? Neither in athletics nor football or archery is India a force to reckon with internationally.

“If India is to make any impact in the global sports arena, politicians should be debarred from sports associations immediately. Almost all sports federations and associations in India are headed by politicians as honorary presidents, secretaries etc who don’t have sufficient motivation or focus to give their best because their minds are not fully on the job. Sports associations should be professionally managed by well-paid professionals who don’t have other preoccupations and give their full attention to fund raising, administration and getting the best coaches to train athletes,” says Ashwini Nachappa, the Bangalore-based former track and field star who won three gold medals at the South Asian Federation Games (Pakistan, 1988), a silver at the Asian Games (1990) and represented India at the Seoul Olympics (1988).

Nachappa believes there is sufficient talent in the form of retired sportspersons with international experience to serve as coaches and trainers. “There is no dearth of talent in the form of former sports stars and athletes. But because of insecurity, nepotism and favouritism which comes naturally to politicians and bureaucrats who head sports federations, this talent pool is not tapped to identify or nurture young talent,” adds Nachappa. However she is determined to put her international athletics experience to good use. Earlier this year she promoted the Karaumbiah Academy for Learning & Sports in her native Coorg district. This CISCE-affiliated school (currently KG-class V) will offer early training in five sports — athletics, badminton, tennis, cricket and hockey to its 26 children.

Krishna Bhupathi, a former India player whose son Mahesh together with Leander Paes won the Wimbledon tennis doubles title in 1999 and narrowly failed to bag a bronze in Athens 2004, is of the opinion that within India’s sports associations which are heavily dependent upon government grants and favours, politicians with influence in government often play a useful role in fund raising and administration. But he warns that there should be a dividing line between managers and experts. “Politicians can perhaps be effective fund raisers and managers, but coaching and development of sportspersons should be the exclusive preserve of proven professionals. Unfortunately powerful heads of associations transform into experts very quickly. They assess performance, pick and choose teams, India representatives and hire coaches who are wholly subservient. The consequence is nepotism, corruption, bitterness and low morale,” says Bhupathi.

To get around the problem of heavy dependence on government-dominated sports associations, in the state-of-the-art Nike Bhupathi Tennis Village constructed on a 3.5 acre site in suburban Bangalore at a cost of Rs.5 crore, Bhupathi has devised a financially independent tennis academy which promises to produce Olympic medals and ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) circuit winners. Conceptualised as a tennis academy-cum-club offering upscale residential, dining and playing facilities, NBTV generates revenue from members and corporates advertising goods and services on the club’s premises. Moreover, NBTV offers tennis coaching to fee-paying students in the age group six-18 at prices ranging between Rs.8,500-14,000 per month. From its several income streams the academy proposes to handpick the most high potential young players from across the country and provide them free intensive coaching and international tournaments participation support at an estimated cost of Rs.4 lakh per student per year.

“Currently the annual revenue generated by us is insufficient to cover our expenses. We need greater corporate involvement in the form of sponsorships and support for our adopt-a-player scholarship scheme. Surprisingly despite NBTV having developed star players such as Mahesh and Sania Mirza, the number of fee-paying trainees is declining. More disappointing is the lack of corporate support though we offer excellent advertising sites and wide exposure to corporate brands under our adopt-a-player scheme. For India to win Olympic medals and international tournaments, corporate support to sport is as important as government help,” says Bhupathi.

Concerted government, corporate and media support to sports other than cricket is necessary also to stimulate youth participation. Rising urban affluence is transforming India’s middle class youth into a generation of couch potatoes — spectators rather than participants. As a consequence steadily declining enrollments have impacted the top and bottom lines of NBTV and also hit other privately promoted sports academies. For instance the Chennai-based Britannia Amritraj Tennis Academy, Chennai promoted in 1985 by well-known Davis Cup players Vijay and Anand Amritraj, downed shutters last year because of negligible enrollment.

Most sportspersons and trainers readily admit that the premier problem of Indian sport, with the exception of cricket, is dwindling cash flows. While the Union ministry of sports allocated annual budget of Rs.466 crore (cf. China’s Rs.4,600 crore) provides minuscule subsidies to state government sports associations and federations, which are the stomping grounds of petty racketeers, such is the herd mentality of corporate India that 90 percent of the sponsorship, advertising and associated investment in Indian sport flows into cricket, the nation’s mass spectator sport. It’s estimated that the sports sponsorship and advertising expenditure in India is $85 million (Rs.382 crore), of which Rs.345 crore flows into cricket. This massive funds flow has transformed the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), managed and marketed for over three decades by shrewd Kolkata-based businessman Jagmohan Dalmiya (recently anointed as patron-in-chief of the board) into arguably the world’s richest sports association. Hence it is able to provide excellent international level play and training facilities to cricket enthusiasts at the domestic level.

“Cricket is bombarded with sponsorship and advertising revenues because it has been managed and marketed well, has a wide audience and most importantly because the Indian team often wins. Winning is absolutely necessary for any game to become popular. For example winning a silver medal in shooting has projected the sport into the news, generating youth interest in the sport. Corporates will only sponsor and support entertainment sports which are widely watched and followed. For money to flow into other sports, their administrators have to first organise, hire proven coaches, build requisite infrastructure, stage tournaments and start winning,” says Dilip Vengsarkar, former India cricketer and founder director of the Elf-Vengsarkar Cricket Academy in Mumbai.

Though good advice, Vengsarkar’s winning and sponsorship correlation is a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Indian athletes are unable to raise performance levels to international standards and win because of poor infrastructure and training facilities. And unfortunately Olympic sports such as tennis, badminton, athletics, archery and swimming which have to suffer the sub-standard management skills of honorary politician/ bureaucrat presidents, are obliged to subsist on pitiful government handouts and support.

Comments Chuni Goswami, a former India football captain who led his team to victory in the Asian Games of 1962, and is currently sports advisor to the West Bengal government: “There is a very thin trickle of money into all sports in India, except cricket. Without money to invest in training facilities, high-quality coaches, physiotherapists and other experts, Indian athletes and sportspersons suffer an immediate disadvantage against their counterparts in other countries. For instance most football players come from lower middle class homes. Therefore they should be provided balanced diets, medical care, sports equipment and training free of cost. But this doesn’t happen and hence you can’t blame them for under-performing. If India wants to improve its medals tally at Beijing 2008, corporate India must become involved. Governments can’t shoulder the entire burden of sports education; they have other priorities. Cricket is over-crowded with sponsors and advertisers limiting brand and product recall. Therefore companies should diversify their sponsorships. Each corporate should adopt a game and make long-term investments in training athletes. Then India may win some medals in forthcoming Olympics.”

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Political-bureaucratic blight

It could well qualify for an entry into Ripley’s Believe it or Not! Almost every sports association or governing council in India is chaired or controlled by a politician/ bureaucrat. Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi has headed the Indian Olympic Association and the Amateur Athletics Federation of India for over two decades; Union minister of water resources Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi has been president of the Indian Football Association for ten years; Congress MP Jagdish Tylter is the boss of the Judo Federation of India; BJP party spokesperson Vijay Kumar Malhotra has headed the Archery Association of India for a record 28 years; the Janata Dal (U) MP from Bihar Digvijay Singh is president of the Shooting Federation of India; former IPS officer K.P.S Gill is president of the Indian Hockey Federation; the Chautala brothers (both MPs from Haryana) — Abhay and Ajay Singh — control the Indian Amateur Boxing Federation and the Table Tennis Federation of India, respectively.

In the thousands of post mortems, which analysed India’s abysmal one silver medal tally at the 28th Olympiad in Athens this year, the reason which topped the list of factors contributing to the pathetic performance of the 322-strong Olympic contingent was political control of and interference in, Indian sport. “Politicians have grabbed sports organisations, turned them into personal fiefdoms, impoverished them and done nothing to boost morale, funding or performance,” commented a lead edit in the best-selling Times of India (August 21).

It’s well-known that the prime motivation behind politicians’ love of official positions in sports associations is to build patronage networks by distributing the meagre funds aggregating an estimated Rs.2,000 crore per year nationwide, and to enjoy the perks and privileges of office including expenses paid foreign junkets. For instance at the recently concluded Athens Olympiad the number of Indian officials at the games was 227 against the sportspersons contingent of 75.

“India’s sports associations and governing bodies have been hijacked by politicians/ bureaucrats. Since top level positions in most associations are honorary, they are not accountable to anyone. Sport should be managed professionally by either former sportspeople, who should be given a chance to prove themselves as administrators, or by proven professional mangers. Until this happens, the future of Indian sports will remain bleak,” says Ashish Ballal, former India hockey goalkeeper and founder director of the Dhanraj-Ballal Hockey Academy, Bangalore.

Though it’s arguable that given the byzantine complexity of rules framed by the Central and state governments — the major donors of sports associations — politicians and bureaucrats who know the ropes and have clout in government can prove useful, the evil that they do outweighs the good. And once in office, they are very difficult to dislodge. The long reign of West Bengal Congress leader (and now Union minister) Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi over the All-India Football Federation (AIFF) is a case in point. Despite his vast unpopularity particularly within the soccer players’ fraternity, even the strenuous efforts of well-heeled industrialists like liquor baron Vijay Mallya and Sameer Thapar joining hands and co-opting the top football clubs in the country, have failed to dislodge him.

However lack of funding is not the only reason for India’s medal drought in the history of the Olympic Games. It’s also the reluctance of sports associations to hire the best coaches, — even from abroad if necessary — to provide that extra edge. And this has more to do with politics, insecurity and favouritism than affordability. Comments T.A. Sekhar, the Chennai-based former India fast bowler (cricket) and chief coach of the MRF Pace Foundation which has produced/ trained almost all the fast bowlers who have donned India colours in recent years including Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan: “At MRF we have been able to produce international quality fast bowlers because from the very beginning we have had the expert guidance of Dennis Lillee, one of the greatest pace bowlers in the history of the game with 355 test wickets to his credit. Together with him we evolved a training and development system that has worked for Indian cricket. In other sports, training methods are poor and coaches are sub-standard because Indian coaches feel insecure if foreigners are hired. To produce champions it is important to have the very best coaches to train youngsters in winning techniques. In India, we don’t have a sports policy; neither do we have sports psychology. While Indian cricketers today can handle pressure, players of other sports can’t cope,” says Sekhar.

But while corporate sponsorships, promotion of specialist sports academies, hiring foreign coaching etc is all very well, at bottom the prime factor behind India’s pathetic showing in every olympiad is that despite the nation’s massive 1.2 billion population, the national pool of sportspersons is very shallow. Krishna Bhupathi estimates less than 10,000 people in India are engaged in serious sports activity after leaving school. On the other hand the number of registered players on ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) circuit in the US is 2,000.

Quite clearly if India is to produce internationally competitive athletes and sportspersons, this shallow pool has to be widened and deepened to accommodate a larger number of youth. This requires the sustained promotion of athletic activity in schools by making games and sports an integral part of school and college curriculums. It also requires a change in parental and teacher mindsets.

“Indian parents tend to accord very little weightage to sports education and excellence. While in lower classes, children are encouraged to participate in games and sporting activity, from class VIII onwards they are pressured to become focused on academics. To a degree this is natural because success in board exams will determine children’s admission into the best colleges given that governments seldom offer scholarships or preferential admission to students with sporting ability. So there’s no incentive for students to focus on sporting achievement,” says Abha Dharampal, principal of Mumbai’s Utpal Sanghvi School, a state-board affiliated institution which is perhaps one of the few schools in the commercial capital which boasts its own playground.

On the other hand the majority of government-funded schools, where the other 90 percent of children study, seldom offer any facilities for sports education or development. According to the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) 1999 sponsored by the Delhi-based Centre for Development Economics, 48 percent of government schools in the country don’t have even one playground. Hardly surprising considering that only 54 percent have a pucca building, only 41 percent provide drinking water to students and a mere 11 percent boast toilet facilities. Says the report: “The school buildings are usually bare, often dilapidated and even filthy. No teaching aids are used and the child may not even have a textbook. There is no craftwork or colour or music; physical activity is rare… Very few schools have any activity in the nature of organised play.”

Quite obviously expanding and deepening the pool of available sports enthusiasts requires this lacuna to be addressed. “It is very easy to start a study-cum-recreation centre in every village panchayat after the day’s studies are done. The same in every ward of every town in the country. Mark out a 200 m or 400 m track with field events and hold competitions throughout the year. Use these spaces for inexpensive sports like football, volleyball and basketball as well. Hold regular events of mass participation like marathons, cycle races and river swimming… Out of depth we will have a system that regularly produces medal winners, apart from putting a lot more backbone into wayward rural and urban youth,” says S. Shankar Menon, a former education secretary of the Maharashtra government in an open letter to Union sports minister Sunil Dutt published in the Asian Age (September 3).

Given the on-the-ground reality that despite its 1.2 billion population the number of Indian youth participating in games and sports activity may be a fraction of those in Australia or Norway and Denmark, it is arguable that India’s lone medal at Athens 2004 is a notable achievement. But at bottom, the real reason why Indian athletes and field sports teams are tigers at home and lambs abroad is that the resources which filter down to the catchments areas of talent at the grassroots level are too meagre, if not non-existent. Top-heavy administrations, institutionalised waste and corruption gobble up scarce resources and allocations for sports training and development.

According to M.P. Ganesh, one of India’s finest hockey players, who represented India at the Olympics in 1972 and currently the Delhi-based executive director of the Sports Authority of India, China’s emergence as an Olympics super-power is attributable to its clean and efficient sports administration and local associations which ensure that a substantial proportion of budgets and allocations filter down to Olympic prospects. “For any model to succeed — be it American or Chinese — it has to be free of the three regressive ‘C’s — corruption, crime and casteism. These ailments have disabled India’s sports administration system. We should evolve a model which incorporates the progressive ‘C’s — character, competence and concern. Only then can we succeed at Beijing 2008 or other international events.”

Quite evidently much needs to be done on several fronts — government, corporate, parental and education — to upgrade India’s pathetic also-ran status in the numerous arenas of international sports. Undoubtedly it will be a long haul before this high-potential nation with the contemporary world’s largest population of youth begins to produce champions summoned to victory podiums in olympiads and other international sports and games forums.

But the monumental national effort required needs to be made. For the simple reason that success in the Olympic Games in this new age of global television is a worldwide projection of a nation’s ‘soft power’. In an age when war and territorial conquests are expensive, obsolete options, its through the projection of their soft power that developing nations impact themselves upon the consciousness of the developed industrial countries of the northern hemisphere. Out of this flows foreign investment, favourable trade pacts and mutual respect. Despite its opaque legal system and poor human rights record communist China attracts $40 billion (Rs.180,000 crore) per year by way of foreign investment against India’s $4 billion (Rs.1,800 crore). Go figure!

Prior to the commencement of the Athens Olympiad 2004, using a sophisticated forecast model which weighed population, territorial size, demographics and national income, the well-known London-based transnational accountancy and management consultancy firm Price-Waterhouse Coopers predicted a tally of ten medals for India and 50 for China. In the event the final score-line at Athens 2004 was China: 63, India:1 prompting an otherwise satisfied PWC spokesperson to state that “India is a significant under-performer”.

From one to ten. That’s a realistic target for Beijing 2008. India has the demography, talent and resources to realise this modest goal four years hence. But the decks need to be cleared right now for a coordinated and intelligent national effort. For all the reasons stated above and some unstated, a successful effort can — and must — be made.

 

With Mona Barbhaya (Mumbai); Neeta Lal (Delhi); Pallavi Bhattacharya (Kolkata); & Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)