Apathy towards sports: will India ever win those medals?

India and China have long been in constant competition with each other in terms or development and industrialization. Beijing 2008 has easily proved China has run far ahead, and India is huffing and puffing while trying to catch up. Olympics they say is a peaceful proxy war for world dominion, and if that be the case India is years far from joining the elite “developed” nations list with its solitary gold medal in Beijing 08.

To analyze the difference in the performance of these traditional rivals, one doesn’t have to go far. One look at the attitude and resources towards sports makes it obvious that sport does not figure very high in the priority list of the Indian education system. While the Chinese government spends major resources in spotting and training sporting talent from the very grassroots and from the very bud, the Indian government is neither concerned nor serious about developing young sportspersons who will take their country to international glory.

When compared to the Chinese system of rigorous training, incentives and facilities to bring forward the best talent their country has, The Indian sports training and selection system is dismal and completely inefficient. The funds allotted are meagre and even so hardly any of it reaches the players. The inefficiency is most prominent at the school level, especially so in the rural districts. The schools in the urban areas are better for they have more funds and personally take initiative to develop sports men and women from within the school. The support from the government or the Sports Authority of India (SAI) is negligible, and so many potential sports heroes go unnoticed because their school didn’t have enough funds to dedicate to sports.

The government sports officials however are far from accepting responsibility. Baldev Desai (D.S.O) feels that it is the indifference from schools and parents along with a general lack of talent that is to be blamed for India’s dismal sporting history.
“What can the government do if the schools don’t want to spend any time or energy towards sports events?, We do provide some funds to schools to develop sports but hardly any of them take it seriously”, complains Desai. “Moreover Parents also want their children to concentrate on academics rather than sports. Some kids do make it to district or state level but they are not talented enough to go further and make it so far also due to lack of participation or adequate competition”, he adds

The schools have another story to say. They say that except few big schools, its impossible to provide adequate training for individual sports to each and every student, keeping in mind the number of students and the time constrains added with academic pressure. It must be the responsibility of sports authorities to build sports complexes in each district so as to provide equal sporting facilities to all students regardless of the economic and social background. By doing this, the schools can identify talented sports persons and then send them to these complexes to get intensive training and facilities.
“Once we send our students for district level competitions and they are selected to represent the district then is it not the responsibility of the district sports authorities to train these children? But it is assumed that the school must be held responsible. We are a poor country and it’s impossible for all schools to have hi-tech sports ground”, said Mrs Shashi Bhatt, principal S.R.V, Bopal.
One more part of this mind boggling puzzle of athletic mediocrity lies with the parents, who do not give much importance to sports, and give much higher regard to Academics.
“I know its all very well for one to say that each kid is different, some can excel in academics and some can be sportsmen; But things are different when it comes to your own child. There is hardly any career scope for sports persons in India, even our Olympic players live in abject poverty, then why would a parent want their kid to go down that path of hardship and disappointment?”, ponders Poorna Dave, a mother of a 12 year old.

It is a fact well known that the best sports persons are those who start training from a tender age, and so schools become the base for developing sporting skills, but it is also a fact well observed that in most Indian schools sports lie much lower in importance than studies.
“What do you expect in a place where schools run from market complexes and apartments? Schools should be a place for all round development, but most of us want to make our kids into walking encyclopedias. Imagine if Mohamed Ali was born in Ahmedabad, would he be allowed to become the great boxer he did? He probably would be reprimanded for getting into brawls and then buried under a pile of books”, muses a well known sportsman from the city but only on condition of anonymity, lest he offend the almighty sports authorities.