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By Danish Manzoor Bhat
Editorial Director, Asia
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After India's dismal showing at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, the world's most populous nation is taking stock and looking towards the 2028 competition in Los Angeles.
Despite its population of over 1.45 billion people, India ranked 71st on the medals table with only six medals and not one gold. The national hurt was deepened by the fact that perennial rival Pakistan did win a gold, though no other medals.
"The current Olympics have come with its own set of learnings which will help us prepare and plan more effectively and deploy resources more effectively in the days to come and 2028 will be India's year is what we believe," an Indian Government Spokesperson told Newsweek.
Read More on Sports
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to transform India's sporting landscape when he took office a decade ago. Policies were drafted, committees were formed and hopes were high. In Paris, those hopes foundered.
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Even though India took 15 medals in the last eight years, compared to 20 medals in the previous 60, India's six medals in Paris only amount to one for every 236 million people. The most populous country not to win a single medal was neighboring Bangladesh, which has 171 million people.
"There is clearly a gap, and it's up to the government to assess the reasons behind it," said Dilawar Singh, former National Director General of the Youth Affairs Department.
"Prime Minister Modi has shown a very focused intent on improving India's global sports performance and increasing the involvement of Indian athletes So while India is striving to do its best, the real challenge will be how the Modi government addresses these concerns after the Paralympics to ensure a better future for Indian sports."
Economic power is often a better predictor of Olympic success than population alone. The world's biggest economies have dominated the medals table since 1896. The United States, Germany, Britain and France have been joined over time by the Soviet Union, Japan, South Korea and China as their economies gained scale. India is an outlier to this long term trend.
India got one medal for every 650 billion dollars of GDP based on the 2024 IMF forecast. By that measure only Saudi Arabia fared worse, failing to win a single medal despite a GDP of $1.1 trillion. Most Russian athletes were banned.
India's massive population and economy are reasons it is increasingly seen as an emerging superpower, but that has not translated to Olympic sports.
Outclassed by Geopolitical Rivals
India was outclassed by its traditional geopolitical rivals. China's medal haul amounted to 1 for every 210 billion dollars of GDP and one for every 15 million people – beating Team USA on the GDP measure at 243 billion per medal but falling behind in per capita terms as the U.S. won one medal for every 2.9 million people. Pakistan's medal came from a 338 billion dollar economy and a population of 251 million.
That per capita medal count is slightly worse than India's, but Pakistan won gold and that put it in 62nd place on the medals table. India scored a string of gold medals in field hockey between the 1920s and 1970s, when it was a much poorer country, but in terms of overall medal performance it has never done well.
"The systems and processes put in place within the Indian sporting ecosystem since 2016 have now started to yield results," said Olympian Adille Sumariwalla, President of the Athletics Federation of India and Vice President of World Athletics.
"Medals do not come overnight. However, a deeper analysis of our performance of the last Asian games, Commonwealth games and the Olympic games has shown a steady and gradual upward swing both in terms of physical and mental parameters within our ecosystem, especially with the financial support provided by the government under its various schemes," he told Newsweek.
"I am a firm believer that if a proper process is in place, medals will follow. This is just a beginning. Look out for India at LA 2028."
In fact, the total number of medals in 2024 was second only to the seven that India took in the previous Olympics in Tokyo. It also got six medals in London in 2012.
Some have blamed the system of Indian sports administration for the failure to live up to its potential given its complicated and highly politicized matrix of federations for different sports and for the Olympics themselves at national and state levels.
But Prakash Padukone, a former Indian Badminton player and one-time World Number One, said in Paris that: "You cannot hold the federations and government responsible for the results. They have all done whatever they can. Ultimately the responsibility is on the players to go and deliver when it matters the most."
India's sports system contrasts with that of China, which equalled the number of gold medals of the United States.
India's Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports had a budget of over $400 million in the year ahead of the Olympics. China was projected to spend $3.2 billion on sport in 2023, according to Project Play of the Aspen Institute.
China has an infrastructural edge over India with around 2,000 state-of-the-art sport facilities that meet international standards compared to India's 100 facilities, which are often underutilized or poorly maintained. The Khelo India (Play India) Scheme, introduced in 2018, is India's answer to building a sporting nation, with 282 projects worth approximately $1.4 billion approved in the last five years.
China has been consistent in developing sporting talent in areas where it can win medals, such as diving and shooting, and not only sports that are popular.
Cricket, India's most popular sport, did not feature in Paris. In cricket, India is an undisputed superpower. It currently sits at top place for men's One Day and T20 rankings from the International Cricket Council and second only to Australia in test match rankings. India's women are third in the T20 ranking and fourth in the One Day ranking.
Cricket will feature at the Los Angeles Olympics, returning for the first time since 1900.
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