Olympic Glory and Economic Development

The Olympics are here, this time in Tokyo and athletes from all around the world have come together to claim their share of Olympic glory.

The table below lists the countries with their medal tally from the Rio Olympics 2016 along with development status and Human Development Index rank.

In the table above, we can observe that except for Russian Federation, China and Korea, all the top performing countries are developed countries. To be fair, China and South Korea are already on the path to development. 

If people are struggling to meet their day to day expenditures they would not be able to invest time in sports or research or arts. Although a crude and imperfect measure, the performance of a country in Olympics reflects the economic development and prosperity of that country. 

If a country is performing at regional sports meets and fails at global sports then it implies the region is undeveloped and the country has a long way to go.

Privatize Sports Administration

Sports ministry is not of strategic importance like defence or telecom. So why not consider privatizing sports administration ? Like IPL, Olympic sports can be auctioned off to private corporates - each corporate houses or a group of corporates takes the responsibility for each sport. Expenditure on sports can be treated as part of corporate social responsibility. Government authorities will be at the top of the structure to oversee proceedings and trouble shooting in case of issues with athletes. This way we can produce results in a shorter time. For a country which boasts of demographic dividend with highest young population, performance at Olympics can be much...much better. This is not an issue of lack of talent but it is an issue of lack of talent management!

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