NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

The hoopla is over

The fortnight's hoopla is over. Of the 925 medals won in the Sydney Olympics, India's share is just one -- 0.1 per cent of the total -- and that too, a measly bronze. Would it be unkindness to remind ourselves that, in stark contrast, we constitute almost 20 per cent of the world's population? In the single-point single-medal constellation, India is keeping company with, among others, such teeny-weeny entities as Barbados, Croatia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Kyrghyzstan, the population of each of which is even less than one per cent of our own population.

Will it be invidious to take into account here China's performance in the Olympics? That nation's final ranking is third among the 160 competing countries, next to the United States and Russia. The participants from China have won 28 gold medals as against 38 and 32 by those from the US and France respectively.

We Indians have of late been making a great deal of hullabaloo over our headlong rush toward globalisation. There should therefore be no squeamishness in acknowledging the rock-bottom position we have come to occupy in global ranking in the Olympics. China whom, along with Pakistan, we have come to describe as our natural enemy, has outstripped us in practically all walks of life, as much in competition for economic growth as in the arena of sports and games. In the given environment, the odds are that the conspiracy theory would now rear its head: we are in fact a great nation, but what perfidy, the rest of the world has schemed a foul plot to do us in.

Does not the true reason for our all-round miserable performance lie somewhere else? To be successful in any sphere, it is of course necessary to possess skill and aptitude, accompanied by grit and application. These attributes by themselves are not enough though; one also needs a measure of self-assurance and pride, pride in oneself and in one's nation. This pride is different from conceit. Conceit Indians have in plenty -- Mera Bharat Mahan -- but it is a poor substitute for genuine patriotism reflected in the determination to put in one's best for the sake of the nation and also a transcendental humility which leads one to admit one's present limitation and impels one to do better and still better. Empty bragging has no place in the physiognomy of this pride.

Self-assurance does not drop from heaven. One has to persevere for it and learn from the example of others who have done better. Picking fault with neighbours is no remedy for covering one's own deficiencies. Self-assurance goes hand in hand with self-respect, the resolve that what has been targeted must be attained by one's own efforts and not through the charity or indulgence on the part of others. In the concourse of international relations, no nation can prosper if it lacks a minimum quota of self-respect. The same is equally true for the nation's athletes and sportspersons.

It is, however, not altogether fair to lay the blame for our ridiculously poor performance in the Olympics at the door of our participants. They are an integral part of the organism which constitutes the nation. Sportspersons develop their individual and social ethics from what they have imbibed from politicians and leaders. If the latter happen to be bereft of self-respect, it would be foolhardy to expect a different kind of example to be set by the general populace, including athletes. If the politicians are crooks, so too will be the athletes. If the politicians revel in the role of panhandlers, so too will the athletes.

Consider the example set by our prime minister in the course of his recent tour of the US. The manner in which he kowtowed to President Clinton brought to mind the analogy of a feudal serf paying obeisance to his lord and master, the baron. Or, if recourse is taken to a different parallel, it was a bit like the report card of a hitherto-deviant pupil whose progress was being strictly monitored by the school headmaster.

Please, sir, we have denationalised the banks and the insurance companies and have opened them to foreign entities; we have permitted the entry of alien parties into our telecommunications, power, petroleum, mining and road sectors -- even railways; we have served noticed on our public undertakings that they better be dead; we are closing them down one after another; we are trying our best to cut down public expenditure and enlarge the space for private, including foreign, initiative; we have scrapped, and are scraping, obsolete regulations concerning exchange control and control of monopolies; we are hurtling forward to a zero-tariff regime; since thy will is our law; we are on the point of scuttling subsidised public distribution too; to sum up, we are a through-going reformed creature. In the circumstances, please, sir, kindly shower some benediction upon us; send us loads and loads of direct foreign investment so that we might overnight attain the standard of living your own people have attained.

Forget, for a moment, the performance of our prime minister and cross over to the current doings of our state chief ministers. An American citizen, stated to be the richest person on earth, was paying a flying visit to the nation's capital. As many as 16 chief ministers, with gleaming eyes, rushed to New Delhi to seek an audience with him, knees properly bent. This guy is the world's richest person, if only we scamper to lie at his feet, he might offer us baksheesh, tons and tons of it. He was no doubt properly impressed by the show of servility put up; he condescended to leave behind a few million dollars of tips for the backboneless chief ministers.

There is an epilogue though to this pitiful story. One state chief minister contemptuously brushed aside the suggestion that he too should rush to New Delhi to salaam the visiting American; such a gesture, he was advised, would perhaps bring in a few extra dollars to the state and thereby accelerate the pace of its growth. The chief minister refused to follow the sage advice. The leading newspaper in the state could not restrain itself, it wrote a long editorial article castigating the chief minister: shame upon him, for he has brought shame upon the state; he had the audacity to decline to join the begging crowd; not the least mercy must be shown to this chief minister, he deserves to be dispatched to the gallows.

Need one wonder that our athletes and sports people too are bereft of self-respect, they are the spitting image of the national leadership. The leaders hanker after pelt; the role model dazzles, the subject people, including athletes and sportspersons, also concentrate on moneymaking. And if you can still become a crorepati despite winning a mere bronze at the Olympics, what earthly reason is there to strive for higher levels of excellence?

But, another phenomenon, of much greater import than the Indian debacle, unfolded itself at the Sydney Olympics. The countrywise distribution of medals paled into insignificance. What emerged as a much solider reality was the ethnic, or, shall one say, pigmentation-divide of the participants. More than four-fifths of the models have been picked by athletes and sportspersons who were non-white, whether of black or Mongoloid or Maori or Cherokee strain. The overwhelming majority of the spectators was white, a great many of them American, and it was a bizarre sight when they cheered Svetlana Khorkina, the Russian sprinter, because she was white, and not Marion Jones, an American citizen, but who was black.

It is an omen of immense proportions. Nonetheless, with a tally of a mere 0.14 per cent of the total medals in our kitty, it is immaterial which side we choose to join. Most probably we would love to join the fat cats. Whether we will be accepted is a different matter; we are of the non-Caucasian stock, and no good performers either.

Ashok Mitra