Winter Olympics are still irrelevant for India, though there has been sporadic participation since 1968. For Summer Olympics, India’s medal tally is typically binary — 0 or 1. For an exception, one needs to go back to 1952, if not 1900. Hence, 2008 is extraordinary. There are econometric models that seek to explain performance in Olympics that distil performance down to five factors — population, per capita income, past performance, climate and a host effect, with the last especially pronounced for gold medals. Between 1960 and 1992, there was an additional trigger in communist countries like the Soviet Union and GDR.

Obviously, no single variable alone provides the answer. Had population been the only determinant, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria would have performed better. Had per capita income been the only determinant, Luxembourg, Ireland and Iceland would have performed better. One can’t influence past performance and host effect won’t materialise for India before 2020, if at all.

However, India’s per capita income is increasing. Has India therefore moved away from a 0/1 trend to a 2/3 trend? Assorted models suggest there is a threshold of US $ 1000 per capita income one has to cross first, since the relationship between the medal tally and income isn’t linear and proportional.

India is close to the threshold, but hasn’t crossed it yet. By that token, India should break into a 3-plus trajectory beyond 2012 and 6-plus trajectory beyond 2020. (A PwC report predicted 6 in Beijing.) The catch is that winning a medal isn’t an absolute goal. It’s a relative target in the sense that it’s a function of what other countries achieve. A medal win is at the expense of some other country. Witness the relative US decline vis-à-vis China. Per capita income is correlated with lots of things: better education and health indicators, better physical infrastructure, access to global competition. In addition, it frees up resources that become available for developing athletes. In a simple inter-regional sense, one isn’t likely to get world-class athletes from Bihar, Orissa, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh. Largesse is now being showered on Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijender. One doesn’t grudge them their largesse, but in one sense this isn’t really the point. There is a similarity with what Nobel Prizes have become, compared to what they were intended to be. As intended, they were meant to make resources available to those who had the potential. One should have awarded prizes to 40-minus rather than 60-plus.

... contd.