Devangshu Datta: 'India should be a 10-medal nation'

WORM'S EYE VIEW

New Guinea's stone-age tribes use a three-number counting system: one, two and many. By that yardstick, it is easy to map the Indian Olympic journey: many, many, many officials, many, many under-performing athletes, a couple of outstanding individuals, many drug scandals, one medal. It's been two decades since an Olympic meant an obligatory hockey medal.

Every quadrennial, we hear anguished cries from sports lovers; some sporting federations are mildly embarrassed, a couple of athletes suspended, a few coaches are sacked. Then the nation ceases its breast-beating and reverts to cricket. Until it's time for the next ritual humiliation.

There are always a few sensible suggestions, usually on the level of micro-management, or related to physical infrastructure. Yet in terms of infrastructure, India should be a 10-medal nation. Or so a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggests. The analytical model factors in population, per capita income and so on.

The study found that the number of Olympic medals is directly proportional to population and/or income level rise. It strongly suggests that GDP matters most in predicting performance, rather than breakdowns in terms of population size versus average income levels.

The model is actually pretty accurate in terms of predictions where most other nations are concerned "" but it doesn't work with India. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our innate "niceness" as Indians or in cross-border variations in the rate of inflation. The model doesn't examine the legislative structures that govern sporting bodies and compare them in terms of efficiency.

Very simply, Indian sports bodies have bad governing structures. As a result, they misuse the resources they do possess. If you want improved sporting performances, scrap the Societies Registration Act of 1860 with respect to sporting bodies. Or perhaps rewrite the Act with special reference to sporting bodies.

The efficient delivery of decent coaching, good medical inputs, objective selection processes, and so on, is impossible without corporatising apex sports bodies. And corporatisation is impossible while they are governed by the Act.

Most Indian sports federations are societies where the voting members elect an executive board. These operate in much the same way as the average cooperative housing society (though that's governed by a different act). Little cliques develop and the membership is controlled by the incumbents, who can thus guarantee re-election without any reference to performance.

It pays to be an Indian sports official. While you cannot accept an honorarium, you can award yourself generous expenses out of government grants, take junkets and network away for all you're worth. Why would you care about the quality of performance? It makes little difference to personal well-being.

This is not the best way to get sporting results. The PwC study mentioned above churns out an underestimate for China's medal-winning tally because it doesn't adequately factor in the Chinese obsession with sporting excellence.

That sort of top-down dictatorial sports management isn't possible or desirable in a democracy. For one thing, it leads to individual talent being stifled in non-PC sports. But we could borrow sporting structures from first world regimes.

The executives of most Western sports bodies are paid, salaried officials "" not "honorary". For them, livelihood equals performance. The executives tend to consist of experts, usually former practitioners. There are often clear performance norms.

The people-in-charge are sacked if the norms are missed. We're talking of accountability here and that isn't in the Indian sport's officials' dictionary.

The interesting thing is that government has enormous leverage to enforce a clean up across the entire sport universe. Most sports bodies live off government grants; even the ones that don't retain their status as non-profit organisation only at the pleasure of the government. The government could always sweeten the pot with incentive schemes and tax breaks. An 1860 Act seems kind of overdue for review.

This won't happen anytime soon because there are far too many members of the establishment who are perfectly happy being "honorary" officials in disciplines where the record is beyond pathetic. But don't expect a dramatic improvement in India's Olympic record until such time as it does.