Sports Narrative Of Changing India
Excellence is disruptive. It challenges, it inconveniences, it inspires, it demands, it frustrates, it reimagines, it nudges, it alters. Often, it does all these things at once. The essays in this publication have traced the evolving Indian sports narrative while it is undergoing a fundamental re-crafting. Indian sporting achievements are no longer purely anecdotal, one-off cases. At the same time, excellence itself has not yet been embedded into practices and systems. This means there is some distance to travel before it is institutionalized – where success is an almost inevitable outcome where the talent exists. This places Indian sport in an interesting place, somewhere between despair and hope, albeit far closer to hope than we have ever been. There is still a long way to go and much work to be done if we are to consolidate the gains we have made. That said, every now and then, it is important to sit back and see just how far we have come. This is not only to check the temperature but also to look back and see what has, and hasn’t, worked. Our authors have expertly captured the pushes and pulls, frustrations and jubilations, provided a taste of what has been and a flavour of what might be in the melting pot that is Indian sport. If not for one man and his relentless pursuit of excellence, we would have probably been in a very different place than we find ourselves today.
This book would certainly have different contents, or perhaps may not have been compiled at all. As that final shot left Abhinav Bindra’s rifle at the 2008 Olympics, it cut through not just the tense air in the shooting range, but also irreversibly changed what it meant to be an Indian athlete. Nobody could say again that Indians were incapable of individual Olympic gold. In breaking down his journey to gold, Abhinav has captured the crazy struggle, the self-doubt, and the gruelling mundanity of excellence. Rohit Brijnath described how the fruits of an athlete’s labour are often savoured by others who follow, rather than the athlete himself. In the case of Abhinav Bindra, an athlete so wedded to process that he was almost entirely detached from results, this outcome might be fitting, even poetic. The ability to change mindsets and beliefs has kept his gold medal alive, outside the Chandigarh cabinet that it physically sits in and inside every Indian athlete’s psyche. Sport creates, sustains and amplifies brands out of athletes, products, services, events. But what of the brand of ‘sport’ itself? Santosh Desai has traced how far the Indian brand story has traversed in recent years, the elements that have given it succour and safe harbour and those that have boosted its journey. It is not just the expectation of the athlete that has changed but the increasingly globalised and nationalistic Indian expects more, demands more, from the events she attends, the athletes and teams he follows, and products they consume. This shifts the goalposts in numerous extremely positive ways. Many of the essential elements seem to be converging for the ‘momentum’ to be converted into a ‘movement’ and as Desai ends his piece, “For the first time, it does seem that this is not an impossible dream”. Is an achievement a meaningful achievement if nobody else knows about it? Sharda Ugra’s piece explored the shifting relationship between the athlete and her story.
Who gets to tell the story, how is it told, what type of language is used? These are all increasingly dynamic and shifting concepts that have a direct impact on power relations between and among athletes, story tellers and fans. It is probably no coincidence that this shift has coincided with the sharp rise in the number of stories that are being told and the emergence of the confident, self-assured Indian athlete on and off the field. Continued growth of both will be vital to capture if India is to deliver the full social value of sporting achievements to her people. As the pursuit has gradually shifted from one of leisure and amateur play to the more serious profession of sport, so has the demographic of its participants. This has made for a more vibrant, multi-cultural and diverse base, as Shivani Naik’s piece demonstrated. The ‘single sport’ nation is a fast-disappearing concept and athletes from disciplines beyond cricket are building their own longform stories, and also their legacies. That it is almost impossible to predict which sport India’s next sporting icon will come from is a story in itself. If you were required to pick just one example from the last decade of a sport finding its feet almost entirely indigenously, it is unambiguously the story of Indian badminton.
Multiple athletes have risen to the top echelons of a sport that had seen only two or three world class players over the previous two generations. Interestingly, the catalyst was a couple of those former players turning to coaching and creating islands of excellence. Abhijeet Kulkarni’s piece traced that progression and Pullela Gopichand’s personal account gave us an insight into the motivations and methods that made it possible to produce in India what it seemed impossible to create anywhere – a world-beating batch of Indian athletes that play as a pack, go deep into the draw at most tournaments worldwide and win team and individual medals at major multi-sport events. If any other sports need a blueprint, and inspiration for that matter, they don’t need to look very far afield. Gopichand has also presented his vision for a coach-led sporting ecosystem, to be able to build upon the success that has already come. That badminton has produced a World No. 1 in both men’s and women’s singles and has two Olympic medals while still having some way to go in systematising its talent identification and coaching system leaves room for delicious possibilities. The story of Indian sport would be incomplete if the story of the woman athlete and that of the fan were left untold. Roopa Pai’s piece took us through both, one as the subject and the other as the lens. The odds overcome by many of these women are stunning and have, without a doubt, impacted not just the world of sport but also the gender narrative in the country. The Indian fan has historically gone searching for Indian sporting successes in a way not dissimilar to the quest for a four-leaf clover. She has now begun receiving just deserts for her patience and fandom, with the prospect of more to come.
Para sport has quietly begun claiming significant attention and space in the public psyche, aided largely by the athletes’ achievements. While parity of treatment might be some distance away we see many of the walls between ‘para’ and ‘regular’ sport being dismantled, including prize money and eligibility for national awards. Deepthi Bopaiah’s article detailed the powerful stories of Paralympians who have overcome numerous obstacles on their journeys to success, and highlighted the systemic changes required to for para sport to claim its rightful place in the mainstream of national sport. All is not hunky dory in Indian sport and the state of governance of sports falls squarely in this category. Neeru Bhatia has traced the various travails of the regulatory system where the only constant has been how Indian sports bodies have dodged accountability and evaded prudential regulations. This is a vital area which will need to be addressed if the more-than-anecdotal successes are to be converted to systems and protocols. Professionalism and accountability become even more critical as the business of sports converges with sports development and the lines between various stakeholders and their motivations and interests are blurred.
The shift from federations exerting power and claiming ownership of sport to a responsibility-driven approach will instead place the governing body in a position of trusteeship. It is likely this will not happen organically, and ‘good’ governance will have to be legislated upon. After all, the blockages in the plumbing must be fixed before the water flows freely through the system. India will have to set her house in order before claiming a larger role in global sports governance, an aspiration she must wholeheartedly pursue. The same year as Bindra’s gold, the Indian Premier League started on a meteoric journey upwards, that few would have predicted at its launch. Its growth showed not only the love for anything cricket but also the latent power of the sports-watching population and the commercial appetite waiting on the sidelines if one could build properties and platforms to reach them. Desh Gaurav Sekhri has traced how the prospect of aping this commercial model has seemed like an attractive model to many others across sports but has also led to the downfall of multiple leagues not built on strong fundamentals. The leagues have, nonetheless, altered the salary structures of athletes and more or less replaced the nationals in prestige, being organized as high-quality events that are broadcast live,that the best players want to participate in. They might not survive as properties but they have pushed the envelope on player compensation and spectator experience. As a result, Indian sport will never be the same again. Another outcrop of the private league culture is the growth of allied professions around sport.
Joy Bhattacharjya’s essay has outlined the various career paths that have opened up in sport; a marked difference from the early days. It is an area that will require far greater emphasis, with education, training and experiential learning being keys to develop people and institutions that carry knowledge and values capable of receiving and supporting the high-achieving Indian athlete of the not-too-distant future. These may all seem like disparate stories and themes but when put together in a publication such as this one, the dots begin to connect, as Rahul Dravid has written. There is clarity of vision and an increasing number of qualified professionals able to deliver progress. This will still require political will and a change in thought processes and beliefs to pull off as a collaborative national project. This publication is an attempt to contribute to those efforts. Sport has the ability to fundamentally change India. That process has begun, with excellence as the driver. There is much more to do and much more to achieve. But there is great joy in the progress that has been made. At GoSports Foundation, we celebrate this progress and are happy to be active participants in the exciting Indian sports story as it continues to be written, told, and built on. Sports as a national project is an idea whose time has come.
