Indian sports development: The story of miscued state intervention

Despite having a public funded sports development system that is successful elsewhere in the world, India have been a major disappointment at the Olympics

The world has globalized in the true sense of the word, with every tangible and intangible sector including sports, which can claim a domestic as well as international fan base, affected. Local leagues and tournaments to events like Cricket World Cup, Football World Cup, Olympics, Wimbledon are saturating the global sports backdrop. In fact, all of this is creating a competitive international environment where all athletes and particularly nations as a whole seek their moment of glory in the world stage. In reality only a few nations share the limelight and most of them got there during the last three decades, many nations have decided investing in sports in an effective way in order to gain international respectability and credibility.

Four years prior to Athens Olympics 2004, the UK government allocated GBP 70 million as direct financial support to athletes and GBP 75 million before 2008 Olympics. On both occasions, the nation won 30 & 40 medals respectively. The poor performance of the Australian team in the 1976 Montreal Olympics prompted government enquiry and subsequently led to investment of public funds into elite training facilities and direct support to athletes and sport federations. During the same period, the USSR and German Democratic Republic mobilised the state machinery to develop a successful sports factory system that produced good athletes in all sports. In fact, GDR were spending 1% of their GDP towards sports development. Their success prompted countries like Cuba and China to create a state managed system of sports development, which produces superior athletes than a system run by commercial and voluntary sectors. In China, sport has always been used as nationalist agenda not only to make its citizens physically and mentally tough, but also to demonstrate superiority among Asia and rest of the world. The Chinese sport bureaucracy has been effective in targeting sports in which it already had competitive advantage, like table tennis, gymnastics, badminton, diving and weight lifting. They allocated available resources to achieve satisfactory levels internationally. Their impressive medal tally in last two Olympics is testament enough to the effective policies churned out.

This brings us to the question, why do countries with public funding policies in sports have a competitive edge in the international arena? The answer lies in the fact that this policy allows targeting young athletes with potential and supporting them with a structured way to realise their true potential, also the fact that this system allows athletes to be involved in sports on full time basis. This policy, due to its success, has been adopted by many countries other than mentioned above over the years like France, Brazil, Japan and India.

Thus bringing us to the important question, why has it not been successful in India yet? Sports is organised, managed, marketed and supported mainly by Government organizations and its regulatory bodies. Though a positive initiative, the lack of success can be directed to factors like bureaucracy, lack of transparency and lack of planning and clear objective. There has been no dearth in amount of investment in sports from approximately Rs 270 million in 1980 five-year plan to Rs 46 billion in the 11^th five-year plan. In spite of all this, we have managed to win only three medals in last Olympics. I rest my case with a point that the Government should be answerable to the public money spent and federations should not only be money making associations for politicians involved in it.