The Paralympics got over on September 9th, and as usual I waited till everyone forgot that we had a sporting extravaganza other than the London Olympics 2012, and immediately after it. This was the London Paralympics 2012.
We Indians have already done enough breast-beating about our dismal performance in the main act.
Check that, and on two counts. The less significant correction is that we have not done enough breast-beating about our sporting prowess. The more significant one is that Paralympics is not an adjunct to the Olympics. It must be situated at par with the Olympics. The differently-abled / disabled / handicapped (take your pick) do not deserve my sympathy as neither are they asking for it nor am I qualified to offer one. I truly appreciate the thrill of competition that was on exhibition. Paralympics and the Olympics - one is as valid as the other.
How do I say this? Look at the table, the medals table for the top 30 countries for the Paralympics 2012, below.
As per the full table 75 countries garnered medals and India is placed at 67 (sharing this position with five other countries – Cyprus, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia and Uzbekistan – each with a single silver medal), and Indonesia and Sri Lanka truly carrying the frayed ends of the bridal train, at a stately 74! Venezuela’s two bronze medals did not match the solo silver of the six nations placed above it. I heard that Hugo Chavez was complaining about this capitalist conspiracy. But his friend Fidel Castro called him and said that cannot be true because Cuba came in at number fifteen, quite respectable!
But, how does the above make Paralympics stand shoulder to shoulder with the Olympics? For that, focus on the second last column of the above table and also the last one. Look at the top few performers. They are pretty much the same, China climbed one spot to numero uno. Russia jumped up a couple and UK maintained its position. Germany slid down marginally and Australia, Brazil, Iran and Poland, among others, registered significant gains. I raised my eye brows when I noted that the US slid down from the Olympics high of being perched at the top to a sobering sixth position.
To make these facts come out stark I have shaded those countries who slid in their Paralympics ranking vis-à-vis their Olympics ranking, I have shaded those MS Excel cells in a menacing dark red (thanks MS Excel, I did find one good thing from among the host of wasteful bells and whistles that you carry!). Japan has done the worst, in terms of the difference between Olympics and Paralympics ranking (this is what the negative sign indicates) – a comparative exercise.
Much as I repose as little faith as possible in the “single number syndrome” where complex metrics are reduced to a single number – HDI, Happiness Index, Global Innovation Index, Competitiveness Index, Business Confidence Index (I am sure I have made up at least one of the above but you will be hard put to locate it or them!) – I think the single number in the last column of the table does mean something.
Figuring out what the last row signifies is not difficult. All the “negative-number-countries” except India belong to OECD! This can only mean, at the level of statistics of small sample size, that if a country wanted to perform better at Paralympics it has to become poor and leave OECD! OK, I am exaggerating things, but just marginally. There are some OECD countries which are doing alright – Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Canada, and Sweden. Please note that I had done a sampling of only 31 countries out of the 70+ that participated in the Paralympics Games. But, I believe I have got the gist of the truth even if not the whole of it.
India has something to be proud of about its performance. It shares space with the US in an exclusive list! Oh, by the way it is also one of exclusion. What this could mean is that India cares littler about its people who are capable, yet needing assistance. We are just not a caring country.
But then, I did not have to go to London to figure this out. Only recently our newspapers carried photographs and articles about how handicap unfriendly our sidewalks are – let alone hawkers and also the absence of negotiable ramps, just the height of the sidewalk above the road pavement will deter even able bodied people. The picture below, taken from the September 9th edition of The Hindu, says a mouthful about how insensitive we are.
The above is not an isolated instance. It is ubiquitous! But, it is possible I have mistaken the context. The man might be training for high hurdles in the next Olympics, at Rio!
You may not believe this, but I have fretted and fumed about such footpaths and even written letters to the editors of papers; to no avail, of course. My mother-in-law has to walk up and down the edge of the road to locate a place where the sidewalk is broken to climb off the road!
If this is the case as regards a sidewalk how can we expect to do better in Paralympics than in the Olympics, even given that at the Olympics we stank to high heaven? Just to make the comparison starker let me give you what some of the other countries have done:
Brazil +15; Russia +2; China +1; South Africa +5 – We do not belong in the BRICS!
Tunisia +31 (!); Ukraine +10; Poland +21; Cuba +1; Egypt +30; Algeria +24; Iran +6; Mexico +16 …
We cannot call any of the above as our allies, even if we wanted to. We are alone in this world, except for a few of the OECD countries, the US being the shining star of the group.
That is OK. The US prides itself as exceptional and claims exceptionalism. So do we! At least in one aspect of life, being insensitive to others, we have the staunchest ally, the US!
Let us be proud!
Raghuram Ekambaram
2 comments:
You know what, Raghuram,
I go with Thomas Grey who wrote in his poem 'Elegy':
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air"
There are so many Indians who will do much better than those athletes who represented India in the Olympics or such official (officious) events. They don't get the opportunity. Actual life in India makes us naturally best athletes! That's why the population keeps growing stronger and larger!
Matheikal, you said, "Actual life in India makes us naturally best athletes!" I am not sure how right you hav been, if not in India, in Ethiopia and Kenya. It is the natural conditions - high altitude and distant schools that made such wonderful long distance runners!
But I would agree with you on the Olympics but probably to a much lesser extent on Paralympics. Yes, opportunities matter, but the innate drive has to be in multiples of what it needs to be in the case of regular athletes. This is my judgment.
RE
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