Why Chetan Bhagat's plan to improve India's Olympic medal count is worth a shot

Every four years, we’re left with the question of why a nation like India, with so many people, fails to win beyond a handful of medals. This year too we have won just two medals – Sakshi Malik’s bronze and PV Sindhu’s silver. But Chetan Bhagat, one of modern India’s loudest voices has a masterplan to undo that wrong. But why should we take Bhagat seriously? Well for starters, Bhagat’s popularity among this generation is unparalleled, no matter what bleeding-heart Twitterati think about his prose style.

His books have a connect with the masses, it speaks to them unlike any other Indian author writing in English whose name isn’t Verma.

In fact, Bhagat's new book One Indian Girl, which he claims is feminist literature, has already got 20 times more pre-orders in a day than Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

So what does the man who can pen a novel that has excited more interest than the new Harry Potter book, have to say about our medal scarcity? Writing in his weekly column for The Times of India, he first knocks off the ‘wrong reasons’ attributed to our failures. Mr Bhagat doesn’t believe that our gene pool is a problem since it is ‘large and diverse’, or that we don’t ‘have’ money for sports. He believes the three reasons we ‘suck’ at the Olympics is because we don’t care, we don’t value ‘excellence in society’ and that we don’t ‘spend right’ to win Olympic medals. He argues that though we do spend on sports, most of them are not funnelled to help win Olympic medals.

He believes that the right way is to change that approach and set up a separate fund for Olympic talent scouting and training with a budget of Rs 10,000 crore which amounts to Rs 80 per Indian every year. He believes that an Aadhar like setup, managed by external professionals would keep it honest and efficient, and could lead us to identify 5000 sportsmen, and then provide them world class training so they don’t have to worry about making a living.

He adds: “Medals do not just come from a) having a fighting spirit, b) being emotionally patriotic, c) cheering our players on social media or d) turning individual sporting heroes into media stars. These things help, but they are and should be a given. Medals will come if we implement the Indian Olympics Fund in the manner prescribed above. Now tell me, are you ready to pay Rs 80 per year to feel the pride of India winning a dozen gold medals at every Olympics?”

To be fair, Bhagat’s idea does sound tantalisingly feasible, and is a better idea than the cheering on people on social media or outraging at Vijay Goel or Shobhaa De. While Rs 80 per person won’t be feasible considering that the number of people who pay tax in this country is probably around 3-4%, given that a huge number of our population lives in myriad poverty and paying income tax is as much of a delusional dream for them as eating two meals a day. But there are enough individuals who can be best described as have-lots in a nation of have-nots, and if you are reading this, then you probably belong to that lot. 

Say 4% of our population pays taxes, and would be willing to pay for a better medal haul. 4% of our 1.25 billion population comes up to 5 crore or 50 million. If we were to divide Rs 10,000 crore by 5 crores, it’d come up to only Rs 2,000 per year, which isn’t an amount that ought to burn our pockets.

PV Sindhu's silver in particular is a reminder that we need to give our athletes the right environment, as P Gopichand did in his institute which also boasts the likes of K Srikanth, HS Prannoy, P Kashyap who are also talents worth admiration. Similarly, Sakshi Malik's bronze along with the presence of other wrestlers from Haryana is also a reminder of how the right environment can lead to champions. If it can be done in badminton and wrestling, why can't we replicate it  for other sports? 

As self-professed patriots that many of us seem to be based on our tweets, would we be willing to shell out Rs 2000 per annum to give our athletes a better shot? Or are we destined to be armchair critics who are willing to criticise the media, the government and everyone under the sun, but refuse to sacrifice an amount we’d probably spend on our weekly jaunt at the pub?