How India Can Close Olympic Gap with China

To match Beijing's glory, New Delhi is gunning to snag the 2020 Games, but India has a ways to go in infrastructure and athlete training

By Gunjan Bagla

Across Asia, hosting the Olympic Games is treated as a sign that a developing country has arrived. Tokyo became the first Asian city to host the Olympics, in 1964, within two decades of Japan's defeat in World War II. South Korea announced its economic ascendancy by hosting the Games in Seoul in 1988.

Now, just 30 years after China's economy began to open up, Beijing is hosting the Games, and the Chinese team is scooping up a substantial number of medals. Will this happen for the other rising Asian economic power, India? The country aspires to match China's record and has proposed that its capital, New Delhi, host the 2020 Summer Games (BusinessWeek.com, 8/13/08). As with most aspects of India, the answer is not simple. At least three hurdles are apparent.

First, there is the country's pathetic performance in Olympiads. In Athens in 2004, India's 1.1 billion citizens produced only one medal winner. Even North Korea, with five medals, outperformed India. Since it began participating in 1928, India has generally won no more than a sole medal, with the exception of the 1952 event in Helsinki where it came away with two: hockey and wrestling. In Beijing, Abhinav Bindra (BusinessWeek.com, 8/12/08) has caused a sensation in India by becoming the first individual to win a gold medal. Still, few people outside India will notice or care, since there is scant hope of India's ranking among the top 50 medal winners. In contrast, China's medal haul is likely to put it among the top two countries this year.

The Commonwealth Games: A Trial Run

Then there is the issue of upgrading the infrastructure on time in a fractious democracy. In October 2010, New Delhi will host the Commonwealth Games, a gathering of about 6,000 athletes from the 72 countries with historic ties to Britain. Olympics boosters in India see these games as a showcase for India's Olympics bid for 2020. But upgrading roads and bridges and building tunnels in a city of 14 million is challenging. Hundreds of ancient monuments dot the Delhi landscape. These must be protected, and so must the homes of millions of voters. Public interest litigation has threatened to slow down some construction, such as the Olympic Village being built in the flood plain of the Yamuna River.

India's booming economy keeps the good New Delhi hotels full in normal times. Despite new construction, the capital is expected have a shortfall of more than 10,000 hotel rooms during the Commonwealth Games. The Olympics will stretch India's capacity much further. Solutions that work in autocratic China won't work in India's raucous open society.

And that brings us to the third challenge. Indian voters have become inclined to driving incumbent governments out of power, and coalitions composed for former members of the opposition often prefer to reverse the previous regime's decisions. Yet to win and host the Games, India's politicians and bureaucrats will need to rise above partisan differences for the next 12 years and keep the International Olympic Committee convinced that India can deliver.