Does India Need More Medals?

 

Yesterday India won a bronze medal by defeating Germany 5-4 in an exhilarating men's field hockey game at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. (The 2020 Olympics were delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) It was a welcome end to the drought since India's last medal in men's hockey at the 1980 Moscow Olympics 41 years ago. 

Many in India are fond of asking, why doesn't India win more often? Is India not competitive enough? Do Indians lack athleticism? Does India not spend enough on sports? 

These questions got me thinking about a book I've been reading called Range by David Epstein. The book talks about the downsides of early and deep specialization and the benefits of generalization. I played several sports growing up. Partly because I grew up on a university campus where my father was a professor of engineering. The IIT Delhi campus has excellent facilities for almost every imaginable sport. And I played them all. I took a special liking to a few sports like tennis, basketball, table tennis, cricket, squash, and judo. But as you can see, that's still a long list. That's also an absence of specialization. 

I can't remember where I read that sports injuries are most often caused by repeated stress on the same joints and muscles. This is the kind of stress caused by playing the same sport year after year, especially likely if you're receiving specialized coaching and playing competitively. With that in mind, I've followed a practice of rotating my involvement in sports so that I don't play any single sport with any sort of exclusive focus. I play for fun. 

As evidenced by the examples of Simone Biles and Novak Djokovic at these Olympics, the hyper-competitive lifestyle also takes a huge mental toll. The question, therefore, is this -- do competitive societies require their citizens to pay a price in terms of their long-term physical and mental wellbeing? If so, is that price worthwhile? The long lists of PTSD and suicide cases in the US military would suggest that, at least in the geopolitical space, US citizens do indeed pay a very heavy price for the nation's need to be seen as a global power. I suggest the US pays a similar, less visible price in other areas including competitive sports. Other less transparent societies like China and Russia may do a better job of hiding the cost of their deep need to be competitive and win more medals on the world stage, but a price is paid nevertheless. 

Is India, then, better off not being competitive and saving its citizens the burden of physical and mental ailments that hound them for the rest of their lives? My current thinking is that that may very well be the case. India doesn't need to subscribe to the "loser" moniker. The country is doing just fine and doesn't need to chase after more medals or conquer more nations or win more wars. 

On the other hand, there's the argument that Indians are missing a sense of pride, discipline, and deep desire to win. The mentality that allows them to break queues, throw trash on the street, and engage in other forms of corruption is the same mindset that allowed the Mughals and the British to rule India for centuries. 

There's also the question of national priorities and whether sports is the right place for the country to be investing when a large part of the country still doesn't have the electricity needed to watch the Olympics on television. For the US, China, and Russia to be spending what they do on their sports programs just for the sake of pride and bragging rights when a tenth of the population in the US, for example, has no healthcare coverage is a travesty.

The correct number of medals for a proud nation with the right priorities to win is somewhere between what India usually wins and what countries like the US, China, and Russia typically go home with. 

Congratulations to the team, the coach Graham Reid, the goalkeeper PR Sreejesh, the captain Manpreet Singh, and the goalscorers Simranjeet Singh (twice), Hardik Singh, Harmanpreet Singh, and Rupinder Pal Singh. That thrill of victory might be potent enough to last us another 40 years!