Boria Majumdar in Paris
I have said a number of times already that India is expected to win 25 medals at the Paralympics. If that happens, the one thing that will surely occur on the side is that people will start commenting on social media that while the Paralympians have done really well, the Olympic campaign was a failure. ‘When the Paralympians can, why can’t the Olympians?’ will be the refrain. Some will surely say that while some lakhs have been spent on Sumit Antil, who is expected to win the gold with a possible world record in his event, crores have been spent on Neeraj Chopra. The truth is none of them understand a thing about sport. Frankly, they are self-proclaimed Olympic fans who follow sports once in four years without knowing much at all.
The reality is that the Olympics and the Paralympics are two very different competitions. While there is every reason to celebrate and speak about the Paralympians, there is no reason to compare the medals won in the Paralympics with those won at the Olympics. The moment we do so, we fall for cheap trivialisation. It isn’t healthy, and such theatrics will only harm Indian sport.
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I am all for celebrating the Paralympic athletes. In fact, the more the coverage, the better. We need much more than we have at the moment, and it is a very basic requirement. But that doesn’t mean that we use the number of medals won in the Paralympics to ridicule the effort put in by our Olympic athletes. Or put out figures spent on particular athletes, and ask if such spends are justified. This is actually a very Indian trait, and explains why a sports culture is still far from reality in the country.
The people who will inevitably indulge in such cheap tricks are celebrated television anchors. Most of them know nothing of the Paralympics, and will wake up in the next 14 days to be experts on Antil and Avani Lekhara. Ask them who Thulasimati Murugesan is, for example, and all you will get are blank faces. And yet, when she wins gold – and my prediction is she will – they will be the first ones to push the sports reporters to make sure that she joins them from Paris. By then, they will be experts on her!
And the one question she will surely be asked is how does it feel to win gold when PV Sindhu was unable to make the podium in Paris. Such reportage ends up harming Indian sport in the long run, and it is our collective duty to make sure that we shut out such narratives over the course of the next few weeks.
As the world waits to see what Paris has to showcase tonight, it is also important that the Indian sports media reveals a more sensitive side in the next few days. It is only fair that a degree of research is done on the Paralympians, and the Olympians, who may not have performed to potential, aren’t trashed altogether. While sensitivity might not fetch TRPs, it will make us a more evolved and mature society, something that we continue to crave in India.
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