MAHENDRA VED: India lacking in strong sports culture, infrastructure

WHEN a young Indian shot to success, literally, 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.

I often use the expression "resurgent India" in this space. 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 computerised target transportation system.

He has seven rifles, top-of-the-line ammunition and other shooting gear on which he spends Rs10 million (RM80,000) 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, a 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.