The 17th edition of Asian Games at Incheon is inching towards closure and India has managed to just crawl to the 10th position in the 35-nation event. Except for some surprises Indian male archers shocked South Koreans in their home turf. Saurav Ghosal overcoming his initial hiccups and winning a maiden gold in the team squash event. But with exception of Jitu Rai’s gold medal in the 50 m air pistol event India’s fancied shooters have underperformed. The much hyped badminton women team was left satisfied with a bronze in the team event. But Jammu and Kashmir too had its share of pride in Chain Singh, a youth from village Chansar (Gandoh) in Doda District, and a combat soldier from JAK LI clinching a bronze in shooting. The youth belongs to a remote village where even the basic infrastructure for sports is not available. He got a chance to make India pride after joining army where the facilities provided helped him to fine tune skills. And the end result was India got an individual medal in shooting from a first timer where seasonal shooters like Gagan Narang faltered. In the 2010 Asian Games at Guanzhou in China, India had a tally of 65 medals comprising 14 Gold, 17 Silver and 34 Bronze. The performance of Indian squad in China was much better than in any other Games. Even the 2010 Commonwealth Games tally was also impressive. But the performance at Incheon at the end of 10th day consists of five Gold, seven Silver and 29 Bronze with tally of 41 could not help India inch away from 10th position in the overall standing. The performance speaks of official lethargy and red-tapism which has seeped into the system that the selection and training are over-shadowed by favouritism, regionalism and bias and whatever achievements are there it is sheer personal efforts and hard work. Most of the sports infrastructure speaks of government neglect whether it is state or Centre Governments. With such a lackadaisical attitude India’s medal run will always remain a poor performer and whatever gains are there it should be attributed to individual desire to excel.
