A long time ago in 1984, when the USSR (as it was then) beat Canada to the ice hockey gold at the winter Olympics, a Canadian friend made an interesting observation. He said that the USSR spots good players early on, rounds them up, hot-houses them and manages to turn out may be 20 super players. In Canada, every high school, every college, has a tough hockey team. These eventually provide more than 20-odd players to most of the 12 National Hockey League teams (as they were then), each of which is world-class. The nurseries are crowded and the harvest is an abundance of players. Canada is a pyramid with a large base, which tapers upwards to the summit. The USSR, by contrast, has a very large, flat, low base, in the middle of which stands a needle.
That was a most apt analogy. I have often used it while commenting on our own patchy economic achievements. It applied to every sport the USSR (and its East European satellites then) played. The needle netted a bagful of medals every four years. That still happens, with the Chinese now joining the club.
North America, by contrast, has a sporting culture, where kids are groomed in Little League Baseball, and increasingly by soccer moms and backyard one-on-one dunking contests. Major league sports are big business. They motivate numerous young people for athletic careers. That is also true of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (earlier confined to whites but now more integrated), and increasingly, even good old Blighty, which had the second-largest metal haul in Rio.
The point to note is that state or private sponsorship will only create needles, but properly organised, lucrative sports will produce athletes worth the name in the hundreds, if not thousands. That India does well in cricket but poorly in other sports is proof positive of this proposition. Since one Sachin Tendulkar lured millions (billions now) to the tube in the 1990s, with matching bucks, cricket is a serious career option for talented youngsters. India can now field at least two international-class teams, as it has done recently. The advent of T20 cricket and the much-maligned Indian Premier League have only provided an added fillip to the process. Cricketers now not only earn handsome incomes even when not in national reckoning, but also get pensions.
The same thing is happening elsewhere, but ever so slowly. Field hockey is generating more interest. India won an Olympics match (actually two) in Rio after 12 years and entered the knockout stage after 28 years. There are more shooters, wrestlers and boxers who now meet the tough Olympic cut-offs, which is why India could send such a large contingent to Rio. Doubtless badminton and gymnastics will catch fire now. On Friday night last week, large crowds gathered in every town in front of shops and TV showrooms to watch P V Sindhu fight for the gold, even though Virat Kohli and Co were playing a test match in Port of Spain. More people watched the Olympics this year than ever before.
We all know that aspiring Indian Institutes of Technology entrants flock to the Kota cram factories. But not many know that young kids, still in high school, come to Baroda and Ahmedabad and Mumbai to join the many cricket academies there. Their numbers are smaller, but it is a sign.
Unfortunately, this is still limited to a few sports and even more unfortunately, middle-class parents frown upon this. Just as we force kids to use their right hands even when they are natural left-handers, we compel them to concentrate on studies to the exclusion of all else. That may be understandable in view of the anxiety about a suitable - read well-paying and secure - career, but it does stand in the way of a sports culture emerging.
The government can help and facilitate, but the churn has to be internalised by the entire society. So long as the prevailing attitude is that if you are no good at studies, you opt for sports/arts etc., this situation is not going to change.
My generation had little choice but to opt for engineering or medicine. That was the thing to do. Even if we did, precious few of us would have chosen athletics. How many of us would allow, leave alone encourage, our children (and now grandchildren) to follow a sports career? How many of us would abide by the discipline such a choice entails, every bit as hard as in any academic pursuit worth the name? Even as we marvel at Michael Phelps' 12,000-calorie daily diet, are we ready to accept that aloo paratha and idli sambhar do not exactly figure in a championship regimen?
All of us who are crying ourselves a river over India's poor performance at Rio would do well to introspect and take the right road to Tokyo.
Every week, Eye Culture features writers with an entertaining critical take on art, music, dance, film and sport