Logo

Logo

New Delhi Olympics

There always is a very good reason why the archetypal sport official and the seasoned politician ~ they can be one and the same and examples abound ~ are in pursuit of the same objective, usually eloquent in making a virtue of necessity. If you remember Rio, all you as an Indian wanted to know was whether PV Sindhu would bag the gold. When it turned out to be the silver, you settled for it all right, quite thankful that the girl had saved our collective face.

New Delhi Olympics

Representation image (Xinhua/Chen Yichen/IANS)

Perhaps the most amusing ~ or bemusing ~ aspect of India’s oft-expressed participatory interest in the Olympic Games is that it is seldom about winning medals and always about staging an edition of it.

So it was business as usual when Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said recently that he was targeting 2048 for the Big Event, having in the meantime primed the nation’s Capital for it. Last year, it was Indian Olympic Association chief Narinder Batra who voiced similar ambitions, though he bubbled with the confidence that suggested 2032 might not be a bridge too far. They are always crouching for the spring.

Batra, of course, has since iterated that India would land the Games well before 2048, his indulgent disposition hinting at Kejriwal dabbling in stuff he knew nothing about. But turf custodianship was at the core of Batra’s spiel when he let it be known, quite correctly, that the IOA should have been consulted before any babbling was gone ahead with. But Kejriwal had not really been waffling, even if he was completely innocent of the rules, or protocols, of the game.

Advertisement

There always is a very good reason why the archetypal sport official and the seasoned politician ~ they can be one and the same and examples abound ~ are in pursuit of the same objective, usually eloquent in making a virtue of necessity. If you remember Rio, all you as an Indian wanted to know was whether PV Sindhu would bag the gold. When it turned out to be the silver, you settled for it all right, quite thankful that the girl had saved our collective face.

But if the high-ups, aware that jump-cuts to Arabian Nights riches, however cinematically spectacular, can be reminiscent of the 2010 Commonwealth Games scandals, making the wicket sticky, there is the chance that the going will be just that bit less glutinous. Little drops of water, little grains of sand and all that jazz.

The game is all about, ahem, building the infrastructure, and that implies digging deep into the public exchequer. It may be the reason why most of the rest of the world tries its best to steer clear of extravagant multi-discipline events ~ ask Tokyo ~ but, in India, the complication is bypassed by the simple expedient of impassioned rhetoric calling attention to our national prestige.

Favours are distributed, crores of rupees change hands and the big boys fulfil themselves in so many ways. This is also how India’s honest grassroots enthusiasm and flair get squashed flat. We hold an edition of the Afro-Asian Games and the beginning of it was also the end of it. “Sell the idea and bob’s your uncle” is the organisational game. It is touched by Midas. And it at least partially is why few mainstream Olympic medals have ever come India’s way.

Advertisement