ANALYSIS: So, what are you going to do about it?
NEW YORK: Sania Mirza, the most hyped but nevertheless glamorous sports star in India, a darling of film stars, is the face of the cover of Exhibit magazine, a top technology and lifestyle magazine in the country. The announcement came days after she bowed out without a medal in Rio, and earlier this month, her split with record-setting partner Martina Hingis. Take Sports Illustrated on the other hand: the smiling faces of American superstars Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Simon Biles grace the cover, with their combined 14 medals at Rio glinting hues of gold, silver and bronze, expertly arranged around their necks.
Notice the irony?
Perhaps this might help further drive home the point: India sent its largest contingent ever, to the Rio Games, with a total of 111 men and women competitors. With zilch so far to show for it. And a laughing stock for neighbors China. Since the Olympic Games began, India has won just 26 medals. Now check this out: athletes from the elite Stanford University, located in California, won a total of 243 Olympic medals, including 125 gold, prior to the Rio Games. This year, 29 alumni from Stanford have already won 17 medals, including Katie Ledecky, Simone Manuel and Maya DiRado, reported Business Insider.
Let’s admit it folks: it’s a disgrace that India with a billion plus people, may walk away from the games in Brazil without a medal. And even if it does score a medal – with perhaps PV Sindhu the last great hope (with the knowledge that she faces in the semi-finals an opponent who has beaten her in their last three matches) – it’s shameful, to say the least.
It’s a disaster of the sort that makes every Indian, especially NRIs, wince hard, disbelief tucked in, a perpetual grimace for a smile, a shake of the head for an answer. It’s the season for deflation of egos, mockery of the model community – as the veritable desis are known in America – which comes around every four years.
It’s easy enough to spout one-liners like ‘losers’ for Indian athletes, throw out expletives against cricket for ‘destroying’ the chances of other sports to thrive and flourish in India. But it’s also in many ways inexplicably puzzling, confounding to most in India and overseas, especially given the fact that India did grab 6 medals four years ago in London. The question rise like bile in one’s throat: why can’t the country just climb to higher heights, instead of sliding to despicable lows?
If India’s kitty remains barren, the delegation goes back home with bowed heads, despite gymnast Dipa Karmakar’s death-defying vaults of Produnova – so-called after a Russian gymnast by the same name, an act even shunned by champion Biles as too dangerous to attempt – there’s danger of Pakistan (if they land on the medals list themselves) doing a similar spoof of an advertisement that ran in consecutive cricket world cups, showing a Pakistani man slowly aging as he waits to light firecrackers to celebrate a win over India.
One thing is clear: the much vaunted program by India’s sports ministry called the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), with a goal of identifying potential medal winners and funding them, is for now an abysmal failure, needs much work to be put in, to be anywhere close to hitting the peak of its potential.
On the subject of cricket, it may be heartening to many that even without India playing a series at present, today’s headlines in some Indian newspapers touted India being the top cricketing nation in the world in Tests, after Sri Lanka’s whitewash of Australia. Hey! There’s life after Rio after all! C’mon Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma! Hit some sparkling centuries at the strike rate of 200% to lift up the Indian spirits. The next Olympics is only in 2020; there are at least a dozen cricket series and a couple of world cups to be played by then. Should remove India’s blushes and blues for sure by then, before it becomes red again.
I was in India on vacation since last month. In travels from north to the south of the country, I noticed something refreshing. Many amateur youngsters playing soccer in myriad fields wore uniforms, seemed to take the sport seriously.
Even in Kerala, children in middle school have distinctive uniforms and fancy names for their kabaddi team. The reason is simple enough: sports franchises of soccer and kabaddi that play out on TV, apart from cricket, amplify the fact that there’s a career to be made pronto. Money to be had. Fame to be attained. All, without a college degree. Of course, in Delhi, kite flying is coming to an end, as most youngsters won’t even know how to the knot on a kite, but they are well versed with T20s latest rules. Thank God for that!
So, one can’t just blame parents for choosing a sport like cricket for their children to follow, or to just spurn sports altogether in India, including totally unglamorous Olympic sports like wrestling, archery and gymnastics.
Mastering the Produnova may finally not really help with bills later in life or to run a household, per chance once goes unscathed without any debilitating injuries. With academic levels of perfection reaching bizarre and absurd levels in schools, where 98% might not be enough to get into some colleges in Delhi, or years of rigorous stints in Kota might be worthless to clear entrance exams and secure seats at prestigious institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, time for practice and perfection in sports would just seem for most middle class families in India a leisure beyond their capacity.
Add to the fact that when young girls try to emulate Sania Mirza, soon comes the reality: good coaches and equipment needed to advance beyond the school level requires tens of thousands of Rupees if not a couple of lakh Rupees per month. And of course, the more expensive travel part, with parents in tow, if one is good at the sport, comes later. Some call it heartbreak. Most Indians don’t know it.
The sobering message for India is that medals at the Olympics don’t pop out of thin air. The Guardian reported that the United Kingdom spends 5.5 million Pounds for each medal. According to the report, UK sport has pledged about 350 million pounds to Olympic and Paralmypic sports between 2013 and 2017. A fact endorsed by India’s only individual gold medalist, Abhinav Bindra.
“That’s the sort of investment needed. Let’s not expect much until we put systems in place at home,” Bindra was quoted as saying in the Financial Express.
So, India, what are you going to do about it? Are the people going to take to the streets after the Rio Games in protest to demand salvation from shame the next time around? Are people going to change politicians in elections and governments for this absolute and abject humiliation of returning back without a single medal? Is India’s sports ministry going to throw some youngsters into concentration camp-like conditions, like China does, to train some future medalists?
Ok, let me guess.
Once the Rio Games get over, most Indians would just sit back, and either ask or Google: ‘When’s the next cricket series yaar’?
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief, The American Bazaar. Follow him @SujeetRajan1)