Last week on 29th August, we marked National Sports Day in India. August 29 is the birth anniversary of the legendary hockey player Major Dhyan Chand, and there could be no more fitting day than this to mark our commitment to sports.
I know little about sports. Just enough to wish that we could do a little better on the world scene; just enough to wish young people across the country could access good sports facilities and meet their potential; just enough to wish that there was not so much bureaucracy, bias and barriers in sports.
On the occasion, I thought I would look at where we stood viz a viz other countries in sports. The Olympic tally and other such statistics are of course known to all. But during my exploration I found very interesting statistics on a site* which evaluated countries on their ‘sportiness’. That looked interesting, so I got to exploring it. I would not have thought I would find India anywhere in the top-half of the table. To my amazement, I found we ranked 16th out of 134 countries, with a total score of 48.66/100, compared to top-ranking Germany’s 72.4%.
While the initial reaction was to celebrate, somehow it didn’t sound quite right. So I looked a little more closely at the data behind the ranking. The methodology considers 10 parameters to arrive at the results. These are:
- Olympic medals
- Winter Olympic medals
- Elite sports ranking
- Sports participation rate
- Gym membership per 100k population
- Health and fitness mentioned as hobby
- Playing sport mentioned as a hobby
- Watching sports mentioned as a hobby
- Fitness apps
- Fitness spends
I can pick a lot of holes in the methodology. The foremost is the choice of parameters which explains why India could be ranked so high–you will understand what I mean when we break down our standings in each parameter:
We stand 48th place in Olympics medals.
We have won no medals in the Winter Olympics. (Of course we can question this as a criterion, given that hotter countries do not have the same opportunities as colder ones in these sports).
We rank 37th in elite sports ranking.
Our sports participation rate is a dismal 13%, among the lowest of all the countries in the study.
Our gym memberships also rank among the lowest in the table. (Again, it may not be a fair measure given the lower incomes in developing countries and hence lesser ability to spend on this.)
How then when we score so low on these parameters, do we rank a high 17th?
The factors that follow will explain the anomaly:
A whopping 43% per cent cite health and fitness as their hobby, way higher than the sportiest nation Germany. Only Sweden, Austria and South Africa rank higher than us. Well, one can claim anything. And these are just what people say in a survey, without any proof of what they do in this regard.
Intriguingly, 35% say that they play sports as a hobby, just 2 per cent lower than top-ranking Germany. Now, from my lived experience, I would never suspect that there were so many people in our country who played for a hobby. Given the statistics on sports participation, as well as lack of sports facilities, who and where are all these people who claim to be playing? Did the survey reach out to rural areas, or was it confined to a few cities? What age groups did it consider?
The parameter of how many people watch sports as a hobby is much more believable—we stand among the top 3 or 4 in the table with a whopping 48 per cent of Indians being serious sports-watchers. This is one of the major factors which tilts the results in our favour.
So in sports as in many other facets, we are ‘watchers’ rather than ‘doers’. Yes, if we were to go by TRPs of cricket match telecasts, sure India should count as a seriously sporty nation. But when it comes to taking sports seriously, or even to making health, fitness, sports and games a part of our culture and lifestyles, there is such a distance to walk.
So a good time to think about what it would take to really make us a sporting nation.
And also a lesson to closely look behind rankings and gradings before jumping to conclusions!
–Meena
PS: Confession: I don’t play sports at all. But I do walk and cycle regularly. Forgive me, I am a product of my generation.
*(https://us.myprotein.com/thezone/motivation/which-are-the-worlds-sportiest-countries/)
Millennial Matriarchs 