Indian athletes have started getting richer but still produce dismal results.
International News : As the Commonwealth Games 2018 get set to kick off at Gold Coast 2018, there couldn’t be a better time to compare Indian athletes with some of the fittest and richest human beings on earth. Business Standard analysed financial statements, funding data and sporting achievements of India, Australia and some other nations participating in the Commonwealth Games. And, it emerged that Indian athletes remain underfunded and continue to underachieve when compared with global peers.
The Narendra Modi administration has tried to resurrect India’s sporting glory by selecting over 100 athletes under its ‘Target Olympic Podium’ (TOP) scheme. According to the sports ministry’s latest annual report, 92 of the so-called TOP athletes received almost Rs 80 million as financial assistance from the government in 2015-16. The irony is that a significant portion of this money (almost Rs 34 million) was given to India’s shooters – the traditional medal winners for India at high-profile sporting events. Out of the money meant for shooters, two-thirds went to just three – Abhinav Bindra, Manavjit Sandhu and Heena Sandhu.
India’s wrestlers, including the Phogat sisters, Yogeshwar Dutt and Sushil Kumar together received a paltry Rs 3 million. Sania Mirza, who last won a singles match in June 2012, received as much money from the government as India’s top nine wrestlers. Also, only two of the male track and field athletes named in the TOP list have made it to the Commonwealth Games squad. These two athletes – K T Irfan and Manish Rawat – will compete in the 20-kilometre walk event at the Games.
The TOP scheme aims to identify athletes who could win medals for India in the 2020 Olympics and promises dedicated training and financial assistance to them. Even as the amount of money seems to have been spent on just a few sportspersons and disciplines, the overall allocation of money to sportspersons under the National Sports Development Fund (NSDF) established in 2001 by the erstwhile Atal Bihari Vajpayee government has increased by just 14 per cent between 2009-10 and 2015-16.
In India, where many of the sports bodies are run as trusts by private individuals, the government sanctioned almost Rs 177 million in 2015-16. Many of these were for capital expenditure and operational expenses for conducting tournaments.
The skewed and rather paltry funding of Indian sports stands in contrast to the Australian athletic ecosystem (See Graphic 1). The Australians have a nine-pronged sports funding mechanism, where government and private funds are given right down to the school level to indigenous athletes to local sporting bodies and to women athletes.
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