NEW DELHI: India’s poor show at the Olympic Games may not have been analysed as closely as the Chinese media has done in recent days, The Hindustan Times reported on Thursday, listing caste, poor health and gender bias among the factors.

“Why does India, which houses a sixth of the world’s population, inevitably figure at the end of the medal tally at the Olympics?” the paper quoted the Chinese media as asking in commentaries that could have a lesson or two for Pakistan and other countries in the region.

The paper quoted the Chinese state media as listing a clutch of solid reasons behind the poor show. These include: “A lack of infrastructure, poor health, poverty, girls not being allowed to participate in sports, boys being coaxed into becoming doctors and engineers, the popularity of cricket over other sports, India’s fading hockey glory and lack of information about the Olympics in rural areas.”

In a spate of commentaries over the past week, the state-run media has explained to readers the reasons for India’s repeated failures at the world’s greatest sports event — there was no mockery or chest-thumping, just plain reasoning, the paper said.

“India has 1,200,000,000 people, and is the second populous country following China. But India’s getting scarce medals in the Olympic Games. Why? Counting by population, India ranks the last in Olympic medal number, India got only six medals in the 2012 Olympics, while none were gold,” said an article on the website Toutiao.com.

“Counting the recent three [2004 Athens, 2008 Beijing, 2012 London] Olympics, if the medals were given equally to the whole population, India ranks last.” It added: “Large gap between rich and poor has made it hard for the poor people even to make a living, let along saving the energy for sports practice. Adding that the government has only little investment on the sports infrastructure, the mass sports and competitive sports are both lagging behind in India.”

The Hindustan Times said that lack of a sports culture in India has contributed to the lack of Olympic success. It quoted a piece on the website Chinanews.com as asserting the point.

“The Indian culture has hindered local sports development. Most families want their children to become doctors or accountants. Sports talents would be persuaded by family and even neighbours, stopping them from taking part in high-level competitions,” the article said.

“Besides, a large portion of the population is from lower castes and such people hardly get chance for education and suffer from lack of sufficient nutrition.” Information about the Olympics in rural areas of India is key to success at the event, wrote the official website ChinaPolitics.org.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2016