If there was one thing that struck everyone who saw the four-hour opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on Friday evening, it was the scale and precision of it all. Flawlessly carried out, with imaginative choreography in an iconic stadium, it left no one in any doubt — in Asia at least, if not the US most of which would have been asleep — as to what modern China is capable of. As advertisements go, the ceremony would have few parallels: teamwork on a scale that the world has seldom seen before; the use of modern technology in rivetting and engaging ways; and a barely concealed attempt to send out an unequivocal message that the Olympics are really the trumpets that herald the arrival of a new power on the global stage. China has used the occasion entirely to its advantage. There were an unprecedented 79 heads of state and governments who attended. They were there to cheer their teams, but also for China’s formal coming-out party. All of them would have surely noticed what China was telling them, namely, (as the Rare Earth song goes), “Well twiddley dee, twiddley dum, look out baby ‘cause here I come”.
A comparison has been drawn between the 2008 Olympics and the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which performed a similar role for Nazi Germany (which was raising its head after the bankruptcy that followed World War I), as also the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in the case of Japan (which rose from the ashes of World War II). Like China now, those two countries had crossed into the category of upper-middle-income countries, with per capita incomes of $3,000 or more. Indeed, the Soviet Union (Moscow 1980) and South Korea (Seoul 1988) were also typical upper-middle-income countries when they hosted the Olympics. Clearly, there is a level of development at which countries acquire the capabilities needed to join the club of modern industrial nations, and also the ambition to show off. Indeed, Europe’s per capita income when the modern Olympic Games were born in 1896 was also about $3,000! On this reckoning, India is still about 20 years away from hosting the Olympics — if it continues to grow per capita income at about 6 per cent annually.
Viewed from that perspective, it is remarkable that India was able to host the first Asian Games more than half a century ago (however modest the effort was), and then repeated the exercise on a bigger scale in 1982. Now it has the Commonwealth Games coming up in less than two years, and it will be interesting to see how the country acquits itself. The key lies, perhaps, in India being able to finally understand the true meaning of scale, accountability and teamwork. In a sense, each feeds on itself — remove one and the whole effort can come to nought. For reasons that no one has been able to fathom, India has often resisted all three. Far too many people scoff at scale, reject accountability and regard teamwork oriented towards a common goal as an over-rated attribute for ensuring success. The result is an emphasis — whether in music, or sport or politics or academics — on individual performance. It is telling that the Indian hockey team is missing at the Olympics (for the first time in 80 years), while shooters and archers hope to be among the medals.
Be that as it may, the Beijing Olympics have gotten off to a splendid start and it must be hoped that they will provide the same high level of sporting effort and team spirit that the world saw during the opening ceremony.
