India is a country where
Cricket is the religion. Wherever religion is concerned, sentiments are bound
to creep in and when sentiments enter, logic bids farewell. While Cricket and
Colgate are most celebrated brands, other sports are not even given an underdog
treatment like Badminton and Babool. Although various league games have tried
breaking the hull with their artificial flavourings and popping at times but
like popcorn they are savoured momentarily.
As soon as a child
embarks upon his academic journey, parents force upon them two choices either
to be an engineer or a doctor. Parents encourage their kids for Olympiads or
NTSE but out rightly discourage them in participating any sports program
barring few cases. They have only one motto, “Science padho, Engineering karo aur sarkari naukar bano”. India
alone churns out millions of engineers every year not because they are
passionate about it but because that requires comparatively lesser effort and
risk than going for fundamental research in basic science. I can just imagine
what would have been the case if Michael Phelps would have been born in India, he
would rather have been known as Mohan, got killed as a swimmer and would have
been reborn as Engineer or Investment Banker. As goes the popular hindi saying,
“if you study hard you will live like a
king but if you play sports you will ruin your life.”
Of course education has
the highest priority in our poverty stricken nation as people are more
concerned about feeding their bellies and quenching their thirst rather than
taking interest in co-curricular activities like sports. But then there are
countries like Kenya, South Korea and Jamaica with their low per capita income which
have done really well in Olympics 2016.
Certainly, there is lack of sports culture, lackluster attitude of
administration and no athlete friendly environment that plays a spoil sport.
Otherwise, a country with 1.22 billion population definitely has no dearth
of talent.
Michael Phelps began
swimming at the age of seven, at 10 held a national record in 100m butterfly,
started his Olympic journey when he was 15 and has dedicated last 16 years to
prove himself as one of the most decorated Olympian of all time. On an average,
it takes more than 7 years to prepare for Olympics. In India, none of the
sportsmen apart from cricketers are given such intense training. Indian
sportsmen/sportswoman who have earned international laurels are anomalies not
the result of countries sports-friendly system. Thankfully this time we had Sakshi
Malik and Sindhu in Rio to protect our so called naak.
We cannot just sit back
in denial. Sports like any other field requires investment of time and money
both. It has to be a collaborated effort of our entire society and not just the
responsibility of administration. At least try replacing that Beta thoda Padh lo with Beta thoda khel bhi liya karo.
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