With the Indian contingent returned to country from Paris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the athletes at his residence in New Delhi on 15 August. Though few athletes have met PM Modi at different occasions, there were first timers who interacted with him personally. Indian boxer Lovlina Borgohain was overwhelmed after meeting PM Modi and…
Nations invest in sports for three strategic reasons. The first is global positioning. Sports are surrogates of warfare and derived from combat. Think of shooting, archery, javelin and discus throws, fencing, boxing and of course wrestling. The Olympic Games have always been a surrogate battleground for global power jockeying. Recall Berlin, 1936, where African-American Jesse…
Specifically, why should the Indian exchequer finance participation in the Olympic Games? Let me report on an animated discussion we had at Takshashila last week. There were multiple points of view and I isolated a few ways of answering these questions. The zeroth response came from my libertarian colleagues. It says that the government should…
Yet, no one bemoans the way they look, feels disgraced by their uniforms, or expresses toe-curling shame about their appearance. They represent India and its interests on a global stage too; surely their jerseys require more design input. If not their practical playing jerseys, maybe their off-field navy India blazers could be handwoven and made…
But at the summer edition, India will be exposed. We may win some medals, but they would be very few, and most of our embarrassments come when our achievements are measured against a population of over a billion. But India’s sporting mediocrity should not be what shames us. It’s something else. In any case, Indians…
