When India won six medals at the 2012 London Olympics, it was considered a watershed moment. The significance of this accomplishment lay in the fact that until then the country had earned a sum total of just seven individual medals. The performance was expected to provide a springboard for future successes. Four years hence, on the back of heightened expectations and hopes of a double-digit tally, how should a return of two medals from the Rio Olympics be assessed? An outright dismissal signifying a certain regression may be too simplistic, for there were a few near-misses — Dipa Karmakar and Abhinav Bindra both finishing fourth, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna losing the bronze medal match, the women’s archery team coming close, and men’s hockey showing substantial improvement. Yet, it was no doubt underwhelming from the largest contingent of Indian athletes at the Olympics ever. This leads to questions about the lack of a ‘sporting culture’. Does India have the infrastructure and coaching facilities to produce medal winners consistently?
India’s lone individual gold-medallist Bindra, alluding to the vastly improved performance by the British athletes backed by massive funding, says one must not “expect much until we put systems in place”. However, developing a sporting culture means more than improving facilities. It demands that people cease to see sport in archaic terms, of being nothing more than a pastime. While it is true that it cannot be a substitute for life-subsistence needs of the disadvantaged, the disdain for it transcends classes. It is important to understand that modern-day sport is professional at its core and helps in creating jobs and businesses. It is also an important tool for human resource development. In fact, the success of P.V. Sindhu and Sakshi Malik is representative of what a good sporting culture can achieve. In addition to shooting, badminton and wrestling enjoy more patronage than other Olympic sporting events. But it is also enabled by parents and coaches willing to show faith and patience in their wards. It can be safely assumed that the careers of Malik and Sindhu wouldn’t have been considered as failures even in the event of their not winning a medal. After an Olympics in which Usain Bolt sprinted towards sporting immortality, Michael Phelps further stretched the all-time record medal haul, and Mohammed Farah completed his second 5,000m and 10,000m double, India needs to purposefully chart the journey from aspirations to their realisation.
