When a young Indian shot to success, at the ongoing Olympic Games in Beijing last week, he gave his countrymen, and the world, a reason to be proud of what a resurgent India could do. It is not in the gung-ho spirit, although that can be forgiven this time amid the celebrations at the feat of Abhinav Bindra. The context here is the ability of an individual to surge ahead, irrespective of support from the system in which he is supposed to function.
Bindra’s 10m air rifle Olympic gold, the first-ever by an individual Indian, is more an outcome of his single-minded pursuit, supported by his family. His industrialist father has afforded him a shooting range in the backyard of his sprawling house, complete with a computerized target transportation system. He has seven rifles, top-of-the-line ammunition and other shooting gear on which he spends huge (in million) annually.
How many Indians can afford this? The institutions have failed to create a sports culture and infrastructure. After a century of participation in the Olympics while still under British rule, Indians have won few medals in the international games. The total Olympics medals tally is 17, of which eight gold, silver and a bronze came from hockey, which is now in total disarray. But they have produced an elaborate network of central and state level bodies, both official and autonomous, and a sports bureaucracy. Officials, often at loggerheads with each other when not squabbling with the government, outnumber sportsmen at international games year after year.
When results are dismal, no one takes any responsibility. It required a decade of defeats in hockey and disqualification from even entering the Beijing Games to remove the top honcho, and that too by sacking. Not that the next panel did any better. Unfortunately, the medal hope Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, the silver medalist at the 2004 Games in Athens, shot himself out of the competition. So did tennis star Sania Mirza, nursing an injured wrist, in her Olympic debut. Added to that is the allegation that Bindra’s gun had been tampered with and he was lucky to correct it at the 11th hour. A promising woman weightlifter tested positive for drugs just before boarding the aircraft to Beijing which she denies.
All this has contributed to a general sense of despondency among those who play and those who watch when they are not glued to the TV watching cricket. Having hyped the Beijing Games, the media too is at a loss. The bigger the hype, the bigger is the pipe-down. Amazing, exciting and stupendous were among the numerous superlatives used as the TV channel news anchors and newspaper editors ran out of vocabulary to describe the opening and not without reason.
Soon there will be comments and editorials, as usual after each international game. Questions will be raised as to why India should participate at all and not devote itself to training and practicing in select games for some years. The blame-game too will be played. Then, all will be forgotten. At a realistic level, for India, it’s an occasion for sports diplomacy, apart from immediate objectives like winning some medals.