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Mary kom took the punches inside and outside the ring to grab her bronze. She came out of the ring and apologised for not winning the gold. This wasn’t some comment from a PR savvy athlete, but a genuine reaction from a world champion. Her feat is heroic given the odds she battled to achieve it. She won the hearts of the whole country by her grace and humility even she was about to step onto the 3rd highest step in the world. Such humility, grace, and self confidence is common to most athlets you see at Olympics, maybe the result of of playing sports which conditions the mind and spirit at a deeper level. Quite different than the antics of the Page-3 celebrities one sees so much more often.

I am torn between feeling proud for 6 athletes of India that brought us the medals, our best ever medal tally, and the feeling of disappointment at seeing India finish at a poor 55th rank. This rank reflects more than just the state of sports infrastructure in India, it reflects our state of mind as a country, and is unbecoming for a nation that claims to be an emerging global super-power. We have more that 15% of the worlds population, but got less than 0.5% of the total medals, which is the gap we need to cover. Sure we have poverty, and large majority of Indians are still struggling for survival to think of higher order pursuits like sports, but we are a huge country where even the SEC-A population (approx 5% of total India) will rank us in the top 25 countries in the world. This segment of population has resources to pursue sports if they so desire.

We as a nation suffer from an Obsessive-compulsive-disorder towards Cricket, which is partly to blame for lack of attention we give to other sports. It is easy to be successful in cricket too – it is taken seriously by merely 9 nations, and barring UK none of the others are even in the top 15 of Olympic teams. This ‘global’ success pulls in all the media attention, thus more people get attracted to the sport to the exclusion of all else. Breaking this cycle isnt easy.

We tend to point fingers at the government for all our failures as a nation, including sports, which I think is unfair. Sure, the government needs to spend its annual INR 1000 Cr sports budget better so that some of it reaches more Mary Kom’s of India. And we need a sports infrastructure and an overhaul of the current training system in India. But saying that government is inefficient is to state the obvious, and despite an inefficient and corrupt government, there are pockets of high performance that thrive in India – academics, business, arts. Most of these arose as a result of personal pursuit of individuals, government support followed.

IPL is often touted as a model for kickstarting other sports in India, but I think it sets the wrong foundation of the sporting culture. This spectacle is founded on a commercial aspects of the game, and is focused too much on the franchisees and their egos, and the non-sporting stars prancing around. The sport becomes no different than a gladiatorial ring – sportsmen just incidental to the occasion. It is entertainment and not sports.

Sports is an individual pursuit, and a personal choice. It needs a ball and footballer, a weight and the weightlifter, the road and the runner, a pool and the swimmer – nothing more complex than that. But the truth of the matter is that not enough Indians make that choice. Our culture puts no priority on physical fitness or good health. At its core there is nothing glamorous about running with sweat drenched body and dishevelled hair, or about a mud and dust covered body after a game of football, or bandaged knees. It is a cultivated taste that values fitness and ruggedness as a value, the path to it is full of scrapes, pain, grime and sweat. An Indian housewife will not be able to digest the sight of seeing her kids with scrapes and dirty clothes when she herself has never played a sport in her entire life. Most parents themselves have no understanding of the sporting values and are coming out of lifetime of working too hard to just survive. They dont value sports in their families, and kids are never encouraged to explore anything outside of the house. Our urban infrastructure is of no help too.

I even wonder if our recreational time as a nation is being eaten away by cheap mass entertainment on a colossal scale. All of the bollywood and the page-3 culture taking root in India may be setting the wrong set of values in the minds of kids today. Our national sports, which happens every 2 years, is a non-event in the media. Do we even care which state came tops? Or who are the athelets that stood out? That is a result of Media apathy, which is caused by lack of interest in the audience they serve. We thus miss out on the opportunity to celebrate these super achievers, and inspire other kids to follow in their path.

The fix to india’s poor Olympic performance isnt as easy as pouring more money. The malaise runs deeper. The fact is that without a widespread adoption of sports within families, we have no hope for the talented kids in India to get their 10,000 hours of practice that may make them worldclass. Till this mindset changes, parents will choose tuitions on sports coaching… and gully cricket will remain our national sport.