WHY DOESN'T INDIA WIN OLYMPIC MEDALS?

India has won only 35 medals in Olympic Games which consist of 10 gold, 9 silver ang 16 bronze medals meanwhile other countries like North Korea has won won 54 medals, China has won 636 medals, Cuba has won 241 medals, Jamaica has won 87 medals, USA has won 2,633 medals, Japan has won 497 medals, Ethiopia has won 58 medals, Australia has won 546 medals, New Zealand has won 137 medals, Germany has won 653 medals, and so on. What is the reason behind India securing 87th position in the data of medals per capita of 87 countries? Yeah that's right India has the last position. Because just imagine 35 medals/140 crore people. There are so many reasons for this circumstance which we have always ignored. And what is the reason for poor countries like Ethiopia, Cuba and Jamaica to have more medals than us?

The first reason is 'Sports Administration'. Do you know who represents India in the Winter Olympics, a lot of times alone? Shiva Keshavan. He is the first Indian representative to compete in luge at the Winter Olympic Games. He has won 4 medals. But do you know how he used to practice for luge? He used to practice luge on roads. Once he also went under a truck while practicing lug. Another instance for our poor sports administration is when Deepa Karmakar asked for a physiotherapist for when she was going for the Rio Olympics. The Sports Administration of India (SAI) called it wasteful and denied her request but after she qualified for the finals a physiotherapist was urgently sent to Rio. This shows how poor our administrations are. How are we going to win any medals if we keep on neglecting our athletes? But we do take care of our cricketers. Cricket is currently the most popular sport of India. It's a good thing that we are encouraging a sport but does that mean we will neglect other sports? It's true that cricket is a really popular sport of India and has more monetary gains than other sports and that's why the government doesn't give importance to other sports, not even Hockey, the national sport of India. Because of which, where most people in India know the rules of cricket there are a lot of people who don't know that hockey is the national sport of India. Another major cause for India not being good at sports is schools and parents. Many parents force their children to quit playing sports and focus more on academics. Meanwhile, in countries like the USA, children, mostly high school students, are encouraged to play sports. Moreover, in many Indian schools, there are no facilities for sports. Besides a lot of times, teachers instead of encouraging students to play sports, often discourage them. Which results in students to develop a mindset that if they don't do well in academics then they are a failure.

These are all the problems but is there a way that we can opt to encourage sports and win medals in Olympics like other countries? Surely there are. The first is 'Increasing Effective Population'. Jamaica is a very poor country but still has more medals than us. Why? Because they have an 'effective population'. India has a population of 140 crores but is it effective? No! Many children, due to lack of proper facilities, sanitation, food, health care, get sick and are not athletic. So the first thing we have to do is to increase the effective population. Not only that, we also need to encourage women to play sports. Or how can our population be effective while we are ignoring 50% of our population? Another factor to increase the popularity of sports can be 'Private Sector Participation'. Private companies can make athletes famous, not only the athlete but also the game among people.

Of course, all these changes cannot happen overnight but we have to start from somewhere. We need to change this mentality of ours that sports are not important or only academics can provide us with what we want.

THANK YOU!