India at the Olympics.

Deviating from the HEC experience, this blog is dedicated to the sports scenario in India.

India won 1 gold and 2 bronze at the Olympics in 2008.  Since the first time in 1900, when India for the first time participated in Olympics, India has won a total of 20 medals, most of it in Hockey.  It is easy to go on pages about how pathetic this performance has been, but let us look if there an inherent problem here.  A population of greater than 1 billion cannot be talent scarce.  It does not make sense.  Nonetheless, India has the least medals per capita.  

Following, as I see, are the problems : 

1.  The schools promote sports, but do we get top level sports people because of the coaching in school.  May be not.  Most medallists get trained outside the school.  Schools need to be more aware of this and have to spend on quality sporting in school.  It is not a bad idea to include sports as an elective in school.  Or providing incentives to a student who performs in sports, waive fees for super performers etc. There are a zillion ways to incentivize sports.  You just have to be concerned. 

 2.  The government needs to improve the sporting infrastructure.  Imran Khan once said - to get the best cricketing talent, you only need to have the good grounds at every street corner.  Build more grounds, spend more on coaching, encourage the sports people.   If the government cannot, then decentralize sports, let the corporate take control and be managed by the centre.  If this model works in education sector, it should work for sports.  

3.  India's performance at the commonwealth games / Asian games is not as dismal as in Olympics.  Just that we are not able to convert the medals in commonwealth / Asian games into medals in Olympics.  Government should look at the reasons.  As an analogy, 700 is an achievable target in GMAT.  But every 10 marks from then on requires concentrated strategic approach.  This is what is needed.  Government should strategically tackle issues.  

4.  For China, it is very important to win medals as they associate it to pride.  They spent 586 million on athletes.  It is also said that there was no misappropriation of funds during this expenditure.  This is what India should be drawing inspiration from.  Every time India wins a medal, we read about a lot of corporate who are willing to sponsor certain sports.  I do not see results.  I am not sure if that does not eventually happen or does it go into satisfying the unending greed for money of certain politicians.  However, I am upbeat about Mittal Champions Trust, and other corporate funding. 

5.  Finally, there is a lot of individual support needed.  Sports should be taken as a career, and promoted as one.  It is a shift in mentality and requires the government intervention and promotion.  

I wish all the best for the India's sporting future.

End of Period 1.

Oh! so sorry for not writing about the Interview with the manager for such a long time.  Now I lost interest.  But just so you know, it was one of the best things I did so far in the course. :)

Period 1 over.  Surely not with flying colours.  But Period 1 over.:).  The day it was over (Sunday October 4, 2008) I felt so aimless and directionless.  I had expended all my energy in the last week and had nothing left in me.  I was walking around like a zombie.  So I walked - like a zombie- to the nearest bar and  had a couple of beers with Bill, Harvey and Christian, came back home, cooked mixed vegetable, ate and slept.  Man!  What a good night’s sleep I had!

Next day, next period.  Back to books and reading articles.  This period is interesting.  Macro Economics is one of the subjects.  Finally I start to understand a bit about what is going on this economy - the AIG bail out, the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, Fannie Mae nationalizing etc.  It all makes a some sense now.  I am really upbeat about it.  I am glad this recession is happening now (is there something wrong with me?! ) and I get to learn the subject with an example of current affairs.  How cool is that?!  

The other subject is the Ethics and Governance.  The WorldCom and Enron debacle and new rules makes some sense now.  I had not an iota of idea what was happening in 2005.  I was totally insulated.  We have to do a presentation on Ethical (or unethical) behaviour by a corporation (or a government.)  I am all set to pin the Indian government for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. 

I am so annoyed with myself for missing the deadline for the first case competition.  The deadline for the application was 9am and I read it as 9pm.  Stupid. Stupid!

Period 1 results will be out this week.  I am freaking out.  28 years old and I still cant get over the feeling of nervousness before the results! 

And BW rankings are going to come out next week.  Considering last year's achievements, I hope HEC ranks higher than last year.  Bill tells me that HEC is ranked in tier 1 of Google's colleges to recruit from.  That is so amazing!  However, that is not confirmed news because I could not find relavent information on the internet.  So, I believe the news but you have your reasons to be suspicious.

If anyone out there reading this blog and planning to apply to HEC, do feel free to write to me. My mail id: avinash.s.rao@gmail.com