Labels

Monday 22 August 2016

Why India cannot boast of any Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt?

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.

No comments: