Improving sports in India: An enthusiast’s suggestions 

India is a country of over a billion people. Imagine the amount of talent, capabilities, potential that we have as a nation. But let's look at the facts for a minute. Since the first Olympics which took place in the year 1900, we have won only 35 medals out of which ten 10 are gold and 12 of these are by the Indian men’s hockey team itself. Well, those stats were of the world's second largest nation population wise. Now let us focus on the Olympic records of just one man, famously known as the world’s best swimmer ever, Michael Phelps. He has 28 medals to his name out of which 23 are gold medals. Here we have a man who has more gold medals than the silver and gold medals combined of India. His tally is just 7 short of what our country has won in 122 years of participation. Let’s look at another astonishing example: Birgit Fischer. She’s a German Kayaker who has won 12 medals in her Olympic career, equaling the number of medals India’s best Olympic performers, the Men’s Hockey team, has won. By now, you would have a very clear picture of how much is India lagging behind in terms of sports overall. The key word here is ‘overall’ because while India may be doing well in one or two sports, but overall, if we look at a combined figure, we are clearly lagging internationally.  

Now the question is how can we improve this? As a free-thinking, young India and a sport enthusiast, I would suggest considering the following three ways to improve our situation.  

Let’s not focus on just one or two sports 
Cricket is like a religion in India and the players have a God-like status. Super-enthusiastic fans make it seem like more of a cult and less of a sport. No wonder, the Indian team performs well in the cricketing arena. Every other kid in India plays or watches cricket. People of all ages and gender follow and love this sport. Well, to me, this feels a bit wrong in a way. I think the whole nation is just playing cricket. It’s high time we started playing other sports as well. This doesn’t mean we abandon, ban or boycott cricket. Far from it! It means that we start promoting and building other sports as well with a specific goal of improving our tally in the future Olympics. To add insult to injury, unfortunately cricket isn’t even a part of the Olympics.  

Those in the cricketing arena need to help other sports 
Continuing from my first point, I suggest we try to use the intense cricket craze to our advantage by using it to empower other sports. After the recent digital rights auctions for IPL, reports suggested that BCCI will now earn close to 90-95 crore rupees per IPL match. Now, that’s a huge sum. If we can set aside just a small per-match sum of Rs 5 crores of the total amount as “donation” for other sports, in just one season of IPL, we would be able to raise more than 350 crore rupees. This much money is sufficient to build the right infrastructure, facilities and environment to empower a sport. This may sound complex and unusual, so I will try to explain with the help of an example. Let’s take a lesser-known sport in India, like javelin throw. Of course, it has become famous now thanks to Neeraj Chopra, but still it’s played and known by very few Indians. If we use the above-mentioned amount of Rs 350 crore and invest it into creating better facilities to promote Javelin throw, we can spark a small change that will have lasting results in the long term. We can build world-class training facilities, the best stadiums in the world, buy the correct equipment, hire the top coaches and promote Javelin intensively. Of course, some more funding will be required, but the money given by BCCI is enough to lay the foundation stones. All this will attract the youth to come and play an otherwise unknown sport. India has such a large young population, even if a fraction of it finds interest in javelin throw and can get the right training then we can produce a significant number of world-class athletes. This is not the ultimate solution but can definitely enable a good start. 

Sports per state programme (SPSP) 
I propose a government-led initiative that takes advantage of our dual strengths – our demographic dividend and our diversity. If we can assign each state of our country a sport that it must support, build and empower as a part of its manifesto then automatically many sports will get commercialized and famous in India. Again, let's understand this using an example. The state of Odisha is known for its world-class Hockey facilities and everyone is aware about how the state government supports hockey. If in a similar fashion, every state government takes on the responsibility of promoting and encouraging a sport, then we will certainly have a steady and ready battalion of competitive participants for the Olympics.  

I sincerely wish to see our country do well at the international stage and with the advantage of our population as well as some insightful planning, I see no reason why we would not be successful in the same. 

Viraj Bhatnagar is a student of Ridge Valley School. Views expressed are personal.