Unleashing India’s sporting potential: The roadmap to India’s bid for the 2036 Olympics
Visualise this. It is 2036, the Olympics is being hosted in India and the overall medals tally shows 100 medals for India. The champion medal winners were just schoolchildren who saw the abysmal performance of 7 overall medals at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 and wowed to strive for gold. The Olympics holds great significance for India as it fosters a sense of national pride and unity among the people. The desire of over 1.4 billion people goes far beyond having a better medal tally in the Olympics. It is to make the nation a sporting powerhouse. It represents a collective aspiration to transform the country from a lower middle-income country with a GNI per capita of $2100 to an upper middle-income country with a GNI per capita of ~$4000, with a likely 10 Trillion economy by 2036. And we all are dreaming big, with the Indian Government driven to host the 2036 Olympics. This will position India’s ascension as an economic superpower and modern country in the coming era. Hosting the Olympics will provide a golden opportunity for the Indian athletes and sportspersons to shine in front of a home audience on the biggest sports platform. Since the 1900 Paris games, when India first participated in Olympics with a solo representative, India has won only 35 Olympic medals – 5 between 1900 and 1936, and 30 after independence (1948 to 2020) and 18 medals in the past 4 Olympics editions. But, in this time, Sports in India has gained unprecedented momentum. Over the last decade, we have witnessed a growing importance of sports in India. The Central as well as most state Governments are featuring sports high on their agenda, through initiatives like having a larger budgetary allocation for sports, large-scale sporting events, boosting sports infrastructure, and identification and nurturing of talent. In addition to National Games and zonal competitions, several sports events, under the ambit of Khelo India have come to fore, which includes the Khelo India Youth Games, University Games, and School Games. Additionally, for the fiscal year 2023-24, budgetary allocation by the Central Government have increased to Rs. ₹3,397.32 Crore, which is the highest ever outlay for sports in India so far. We still need to see this investment go up exponentially, at least by 5 to 10 times, so that we are in line with the investment by countries in the West and China. The Olympics has always been a symbol of national pride. Whether it was the Seoul Games in 1998 or Beijing Games in 2008, the work towards preparing for the national event, all started at the grassroots for Korea and China, and the journey took over a decade. Today, various State Governments are focusing more on strengthening the sports ecosystem, which will help India prepare for 2036 Olympics. States like Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Odisha are leading and upping the ante for others to follow by building a state-of-the-art Global sports Centre, improving the sports infrastructure, facilities and training centres. Meghalaya has over 400 grassroots sports infrastructure projects under construction. Haryana, apart from producing International level Sports champions, has been consistently supporting the grassroots sports culture with good residential, training and rehabilitation facilities. Intent is translating into action, and the efforts to create a strong foundation are finally taking shape, across the length and breadth of the country. The roadmap to create India as a sporting powerhouse starts by making our children fall in love with sports. India has nearly 1.5 million schools and 265 million school children. As voiced by the Prime Minister earlier this year, it is vital to ensure that “no talent is overlooked”’. Children’s participation in multi-sport championships at school level will serve as a strong platform for talent scouting. The solution is building an environment for children to grow in sports. This requires the ecosystem stakeholders to step in to sow the seeds and curate the sporting culture in India. To encourage large-scale participation of children, it is essential to build an inclusive and professional multi-sport system that democratises access and provides transparency. Delivering inspiring sporting experiences at school level will help identify and groom talent early and set the forward path towards India’s quest for gold. The current school level sports competition efforts are highly fragmented, and competitions happen in few pockets, with fewer participating academic institutions. Leveraging technology will play a crucial role in tracking, recording, and assessing the performance of all participating athletes across schools. This approach will not only enhance credibility and transparency but also help map and monitor grassroots talent within a city, enabling the customization of training programs. Inspiring sporting experiences at the school level will ignite interest, nurture passion, and empower sports talent at an early age. There is immense faith that this bottom-up approach will unleash India’s sporting potential and ensure that the nation is ready to march towards the quest for gold at the 2036 Olympics!