Abhinav Bindra, and all kudos to him for winning India’s first individual Olympic gold medal, also amplifies the huge string of malaises that afflicts the Indian sporting fraternity. Apart from the all important sport of Cricket, which literally rains money, and where we sadly end up losing more than winning, no other form of sports has had any measure of success at the larger world stage. A person like Abhinav can succeed, no doubt, due to his grit and determination but more importantly because he has access to independent funds to fuel his dreams. Had he lacked the necessary funds or depended solely on government infrastructure I am sure he wouldn’t have been able to reach the heights that he reached. This is true for almost all sports where private money provides access to world class sporting infrastructure. Take for instance Sania Mirza or better still Viswanathan Anand. They have reached the world stage inspite of the government’s lackadaisical attitude to sports and sportsmen in general.In India where politics permeates almost everything, sports has fallen victim into its vice
grip. The politicians have, as a unit, colluded to keep India in the dark ages as far as competitive sports is concerned and corruption is endemic. Look at what they have done to our hockey team or in the latest case where Monica Devi, was so unceremoniously pulled out of the Beijing Olympics Weightlifting team on half baked doping charges, which were later withdrawn. But the damage had been done by then. It’s maddening to think that our polity is so spineless that they don’t feel any emotion whatsoever to see such a large nation religiously ending up at the tail end of any medal tally or can’t they just simply look over their shoulders and see where China has taken its sporting fraternity.
It is said that a people deserves the government that it gets, which to a large measure may be true, but are one billion people so warped that their politicians, who after 6+ decades of independence, can garner only one individual Olympic gold medal and that to inspite them!