Abhinav Bindra may not be the first one to say so, but his is the most influential voice that has been added to the chorus that says cricket (played by a handful of nations) will not make India a sporting nation. Such triumphs as Indians have notched up so far in international arenas have been with little help from governments, and only marginally more help from companies. Whether it is a golfer like Jeev Milkha Singh, a chess giant like Vishwanathan Anand (who felt he had to settle in Spain), a badminton champion like Prakash Padukone (who too set up base abroad in order to win the All-England), tennis champions like the Paes-Bhupathi duo, or Bindra himself (whose father spent a crore of rupees on his training every year), success has come because of individual enterprise and effort; there has been little support from the system. If such successes are to be replicated on a larger scale, India needs to spend a lot more money developing sports, and build a new eco-culture that emphasises performance.
In non-Communist countries, market forces have done more to develop sporting capabilities than governments. India has had the worst of both worlds because the government has been fiddling around in what is a liberal, market economy for the most part, and politicians have captured one sports body after another, whether it is football, hockey or athletics. So while countries like China have used authoritarian methods and many western countries have leveraged the entertainment potential of sports, India has fallen between the two stools. Here the money is controlled by the government and dispensed by ineffective and self-aggrandising federations. At the last Olympics, there were 100-odd Indian sportspersons and 236 officials.
Some institutional support role is of course provided by the army, which has produced someone like Rajyavardhan Rathore. Until about a decade ago, the State Bank of India, the railways and Indian Airlines used to help out with jobs. But that is no longer enough. There is need for massive investments in coaches, specialised facilities and the like – a la what is provided by the MRF Pace Foundation and (less successfully) by the Tata Football Academy. Companies have also sponsored sportspersons (GVK in the case of Sania Mirza, NIIT for Vishwanathan Anand), and some of the big groups have now started thinking of making an investment in sport, in the national interest. But even then, success is not automatic — people like Vijay Mallya sponsoring football teams has made little difference to the abysmal quality of football.
The real support will come from a paying public, which really means advertising money attracted by TV audiences that are bolstered by the rise of the middle class. As cricket’s Indian Premier League showed, films and TV soaps are not enough to sate the entertainment needs of the population. A business opportunity is therefore waiting to be encashed, if people with Lalit Modi’s imagination and drive set themselves the task. Companies that have made a tentative beginning with engagement in sport need to evolve clear revenue models and business plans. As with so many other things in the country, it is the micro-effort and not the macro-environment that, in the end, will make a difference.
