Why India cant perform
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/olympics-study-reveals-why-india-cant-perform/70441-29-52.html
A new study now claims to find out why Indians can't perform at the Olympics. Indians have once again pinned all their hopes on its athletes as the Olympics is scheduled to begin next week.
According to a study by Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund, two development experts at the Duke University in the US, low social mobility is the key reason for India's failure at Olympics.
Low social mobility means that the pool of people who can "effectively participate in sports" remains small.
As per the study, the reasons for low social mobility are poor road connectivity between the rural areas and big metros and poor radio and other information networks that keep the masses ill-informed.
Huge population, too, has little to do with winning medals at Olympics. Going by population size, the United States should have won 43 while, smaller countries like Jamaica should have won nothing. India should have won at least 157 medals in the 2004 Olympics, going by its huge population size.
However, at the end of the Athens Olympics, the US won almost three times the number of medals, Jamaica won five medals, while India won just one medal.
The question that many people ask is, why India fails to deliver in the Olympics.
Common logic would suggest that it is because Indians are poor, and thus more engaged in a daily battle for survival.
However, the new theory suggests otherwise. It is poor social mobility because of poor infrastructure that leads to poor performance at the Olympics.
The study cites the example of Portugal, which despite being a rich nation failed to win a single medal in the 1992 Olympics. However, as radio connectivity grew over the next four-years, Portugal managed to win two medals and has never drawn a blank ever since.
The bottom line according to the study remains that better-informed people, perform better.
Sports critics agree that if India has to win medals, it will have to realise the potential of athletes in rural areas.
“Take the example of Pele or Maradona or the American athletes or the basketball teams. Nowhere do the best players come from big cities and they come from background which is not affluent,” says Pradeep Magazine, Adviser HT Sports.
The new research only proves that if India has to win more medals, it is time to realise, that the road to Olympics goes through a village.
