To Be Or Not To Be In Sports, That Is The Question For The Government

It’s not as if it has all been a disaster for Vijay Goel at Rio 2016. Inevitably, but surely, he has proven one thing beyond doubt. The government has no business running sports.

In which sport has India been the most successful in contemporary times? Yes, cricket. Who runs cricket in India? BCCI. Is BCCI a government body? No.

Who has been India’s biggest tennis star in recent years? Sania Mirza. And Sania Mirza has made it big, building on the crucial support provided by her family, not by the Andhra or central governments.

As Harsha Bhogle argues in this Indian Express post, at best government can oversee operations. It can make it easy for private corporations and boards to come up with facilities and infrastructure. It cannot be the body deciding on sports policy and on allocation of resources. Refer to this Hindustan Times report, as a case in point, where it is alleged that more than Rs 100 crore earmarked for the training of Rio athletes was eventually diverted to hosting of the South Asian Federation games in Assam.

No tangible gains for bureaucrats

Governments are not abstracts. They are institutions run by people from society. And Indian society currently is still in the process of discovering wealth as compared to its European, North American, and East Asian counterparts. In a society at that stage of development, the most powerful incentive of all is monetary gain (overlooking exceptions). When everybody else in the working age has monetary gains as his/her goal, why shouldn’t those working for the government?

Bureaucrats running sports in India get their pay regardless of the state of sport run by them. Take for example any department of sports in an Indian state. Say this state produces a number of high-quality badminton players. It is highly unlikely that the bureaucrats running the sports department would get a raise or a monetary reward for that. They would just get their pay. Which is exactly what they would have got even if the state badminton players were the absolute worst in the entire country.

For those who run sports for the government, there is no incentive to plan for better results, as there are no questions asked in case of poor ones.

Here is where corporates have a decisive advantage. Incentives are built into their working. They exist to make profits. And profits are not dependent as much on the outlay as on the final result.

Government’s approach towards sports, and with most other fields, is based on allocations. The amount of money allocated is seen as an end in itself. Growth is said to be determined not by an improvement in output, but by an increase in inputs. That approach doesn’t produce Olympic medal-winning athletes.

An output-focussed approach does. And that is what corporates bring in. That is why the best thing the central and state governments can do for Indian sport is to step back and lend a helping hand to corporations and local clubs willing to manage and run sports in India.

And corporates will come; because for one, purely on anecdotal evidence, there is a massive market in India even for sports other than cricket. Secondly, even this market size is set to grow manifold if indigenous stars are produced in these sports. It is the creation of these stars, and the resultant gains from their creation, which the corporates would be eyeing.

Getting the government out of sports: Is it really that simple?

Well, no.

While corporates and local clubs would undoubtedly do a better job in managing sports, that is not the only issue with sports in India.

One phrase that is often heard when it comes to India and Olympics is this: “how is it possible that a country of a billion people cannot produce one gold medal-winning athlete?”

A momentary reflection on that jibe reveals just how wrong it is. The population of the country doesn’t matter when it comes to sports; what counts is the sporting population. In other words, it is not about how many people live in India, but how many of those living here are engaged in sporting activity. It can be said with certainty that the pool from which India draws its sportspersons might be amongst the smallest in the world.

Increasing the size of this pool would require increasing the number of stadiums, so that more people have access to sporting facilities. Many of these stadiums, however, would be loss-making projects. But if the size of the sporting population has to be increased, these stadiums would have to be constructed.

Corporates will probably avoid such enterprises. And it would be left to the government to fill the gap. Bluntly put, if India needs the ideal number of stadiums befitting its population, the private sector alone cannot do it. There would perhaps have to be a model where the state government builds the infrastructure but the management of it becomes the responsibility of local bodies or citizen associations.

If India wants the glory like that of other great sporting nations, it must put in efforts like theirs. There are no free lunches. Neither are there free medals.