I was sent from UNESCO for their education programmes at the school level. I always carry my tennis kit with me. So, after a whole day's discussion, I would go and have a game of tennis in the evening. There I would meet people whom I would never have met in the course of my work.
China's sports facilities in 1978, in my view, were worse than India's. Then, how has China come to what it is now? They created 'spare time sports schools' and they now have 3,000 such schools in the country. These schools are like clubs which have facilities for gymnastics, swimming, weightlifting, athletics -- all Olympic games.
Around each such sport school is a cluster of 20 to 25 schools. People from the spare time sports centres would go out and meet students who show promise and talk to them, talk to their parents and their teachers and get them to join the sports school in their spare time; either before school or after school or during the lunch interval to train in the sport of their choice.
Children were not forced to go to these schools?
No, and this is very much unlike what happens here in India. Here, somebody sitting in Delhi chooses somebody studying in Trivandrum for a sport. China never did that. And today, they rank third or fourth in the world in the Olympic tally. In the last Olympics, they came fourth, and this year too they will come third or fourth.
This could happen because they have built up a decentralised infrastructure. Beijing does not dictate from 2,000 miles away.
India has missed the boat in that sense. We are not dealing with the issue in the right manner.
Who, according to you, is responsible for India missing the boat?
I think it is the government. And our federations have not been able to see how best they can impart training and instill the spirit of competition among our sportspersons.
Do you think we have talent in the country?
We have plenty of talent. In my view, we are a very talented people. We have as much talent as there is in China.
But we haven't produced a single individual Olympic gold medalist.
We have betrayed our youth. I have written articles on this subject. Somebody sitting in Delhi trying to spot talent in Madurai or Trichi or any such place is a chaotic practice. And this is what we are trying to do. Catch them young, we are told. How? And catch whom young? The authorities have all sorts of criteria which are terribly outmoded.
In what way can we catch them young? Like you said, how can there be decentralisation of selection?
I had put up a scheme for Tamil Nadu on the basis of what I saw in China and fortunately, Jayalalitha, who was the chief minister then, saw it was a very good scheme for rural sports centres.
This was just before the Asian Games. I wanted Rs 7 crore for Tamil Nadu over a period of two years. Seven crores were allotted and then they put some IAS fellow as the secretary for the Tamil Nadu sports centre. He simply stalled the programme because it was not the brainchild of some bureaucrat; it had come from a non-bureaucrat -- me.
But you are a former athlete, a sportsperson.
I am a Rhodes scholar and none of the IAS officers have my qualifications. I am saying this because the bureaucracy killed the project. These chaps have no idea of sport, they do not know how to develop sport, and they are the ones who decide. What can politicians do? Not one rupee out of the seven crore was spent on the project even though the funds had been allotted.
But very poor countries in Africa are producing world-class middle distance and long distance runners.
Yes. They are doing much better than we are. And it is not that we have no money or talent.
But we always say we do not produce world-class athletes because ours is a poor country.