On Michael Phelps, Gold Medals and India
Much as I hate to start anyone’s weekend with dismal news (especially a 3-day Independence Day special weekend), this trivia (courtesy Paul Kedrosky) really made me feel very very sad.
Swimmer Michael Phelps has won more medals than India in our cumulative history of Olympics…
🙁
I almost forgot. Happy Independence Day!
P.S. Please find at least one reason to be hopeful today.
I’m not sad or surprised…Abhinav Bindra won a gold ‘despite the system’ and Rathore got his silver with the Indian Army system.. the rest are Hockey related medals – a legacy of the the colonial infrastructure
Just a thought – If one notices – Indians may make up the numbers on an athletic field (we may not have genetic competitive advantages) but we will always score BIG where ‘hand-eye’ coordination give the edge e.g. shooting, archery, badminton, tennis doubles (at the net), even hockey when stickwork meant something, our cricketers’ batting skills…what we need is the infrastructure to bring this out… In fact, good infra (like in China) may bring out those outliers in our genetic pool who will win at athletics and wrestling and other such events as well.
Our innate business acumen led to a huge boom with barest changes in infra and I am confident sporting success will similarly follow
1. Congress-led UPA govt planned to set up Bharat Ratna Bhandar and other Vibhusan Bhusan Shri Bhanders (on fashion Khadi Bhandar)in every states, so that they can be distributed through public distribution system, PDS. One medal, one BR, or Padma award. No matter what sports.
2. Govt took the decision as our enlightened citizens clamouring for BR to Olympic gold medalist, as this never happned before in our nation’s history. Surely he deserves more than that. I proposed to rename our nation Bharat after Olympic gold medalist, if that satisfy our enlighten citizens.
3. Farmers (mostly poor), who constitute nearly 75% nation’s population and those who provide food to a billion plus people, can’t expect any BR or Padma awrds. They will be getting Nuclear Deal for Food and Jobs Certificate. They can hang the certificates in their house wall and pray, so that they will not feel hungry and no need for any jobs.
This is number ONE Congress Election Campaign strategy.
Slogan for farmers and poor: Nuclear Deal for Food and Jobs. This is more powerful than Garibi Hatao slogan (Remove all Poor from our soil) of Indira Khan fake Gandhi.
4. My salute to Bharat Mera Mahan, where millions have no access to Rooti (food), Kapra (clothing) and Makan (housing). A nation, where 20 richest mens wealth exceeds the income of poorer 300 millions, where about 260 millions live below poverty line having no access to two meals per day. They deserved to be given BR and Padma certificates and Nuclear deal for Food and Jobs certificate.
Bharat
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Congratulations to the Indian boxers for winning 2 medals(atleast bronze for sure) in Olympics.. well finaly India will be taking the medal tally to three…. I hope the other two are also gold!
I read this article about how we have treated our first individual olympic medalist – Khashaba Jhadhav who won bronze in wrestling in the Helsinki olympics in 1952.
http://www.rediff.com/sports/2000/sep/13jhadha.htm
This line struck me in the article “And it dawned on me that in the past hundred years we have managed just two individual Olympic medals because we as a nation don’t deserve true heroes. We just have commercial stars for whom we cannot use words like ‘tragedy’ and ‘heroism’ because they are covered with commercial labels. Maybe under all that, there is a hero somewhere, but it is hard to tell. ”
Perhaps it is true, we do not honor real heroes, hence we never get any sporting excellent except for the rare unsung ones. Hope it changes.
Regards
Prof V. Raghunathan, author of Games Indians Play, offers his diagnosis of what ails Indian sports and prescribes a few remedies: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4315
In brief: 1] Freeing sports bodies of government control (and consequent corruption) and 2] Some kind of tax incentive for investments in sports infrastrcuture.