However, identifying people early is high-risk and fraught with uncertainty. There is no guarantee of success. It is easier to reward those who are successful. Hence, unless Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijender compete in 2012, this largesse doesn’t improve India’s medal prospects, except to the extent some announcements made (stadiums, academies) lead to positive externalities beyond the individuals concerned. It’s that which ensures that K.D. Jadhav doesn’t become a flash in the pan, or for that matter, Leander Paes, Karnam Malleswari or Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. If one looks at medals on offer in Olympics and asks where resources are likely to have the greatest impact, measured in terms of medal wins per rupee spent, one zeroes in on track and field, swimming, cycling, gymnastics, wrestling, canoeing, shooting and weight-lifting. Whether resources are private or public, they have opportunity costs and any efficient decision-making requires prioritisation and focus. Instead of such targeting, our expenditure is more of the shotgun type. Shoot a large number of pellets at a broad canvas and hope something somewhere sticks. That doesn’t work. Consider India’s performance in events short of global — the Asian Games, the Commonwealth Games. The track record is decent enough.

But jacking up performance from these localised competitions to levels required in global competitions like the Olympics requires a much greater expenditure of resources. In instances where such resources have flowed in, regardless of whether they are Olympic events or not, there are demonstrated successes — chess, billiards, snooker, golf, tennis, shooting, even cricket. Invariably, these are private resources. Public expenditure has had doubtful efficiency even in these sports. Private resources can flow in wherever they wish to. But in so far as public resources are concerned, the argument thus is that we should be spending on track and field, swimming, cycling, gymnastics, canoeing, shooting and weight-lifting, rather than field hockey. Take the Indian Olympic Association, which sells National Club Games as events that will identify and take athletes up from 639,144 villages and 606 districts to global levels. The sports identified for these games are volleyball, football, handball, basketball, kabaddi, hockey and kho kho. Why were these chosen and not others? We do have a National Sport Policy 2001, though the existence of a policy is typically inversely correlated with success. This states: “Various sports disciplines will be prioritised on the basis of proven potential, popularity and international performance. Particular emphasis will be placed on the development of such priority disciplines and the prioritisation reviewed, from time to time.”

... contd.