Swimming is a tough sport. It is all the more tougher in India. The reason is simple — Indian swimmers are constantly striving against adversities like lack of adequate infrastructure, administrative roadblocks, ad hoc decisions, no financial support, and many other such issues. The burn rate in Indian swimming is extremely high. For instance the number of children who swim in the under 10 age-group, only a very small fraction (in decimal points) goes on to play at senior National level competitions like Khelo India and so on. It is a sad commentary that we have so many young and exciting swimmers in young children, but not even one percent of them continue with the sports.
The reason is not hard to guess. An uncertain future, drives swimmers towards abandoning the sports to pursue academics. With almost no job prospects, and little recognition for the sports, swimmers are demotivated and chose to move on in life, just at the moment, they should be striving hard to shape into Olympians.
As a result, swimming in India is a bastion of the rich and moneyed class. People who can afford to disregard the future prospects, people who can afford to train overseas and avail world-class coaching, people who can afford to buy the most costliest of jammers, people who can afford fancy nutrionists or physiotherapists.
Not surprisingly then, a majority of swimmers that succeed at senior levels in swimming in India are from affluent families. At the centre of all this turmoil and strife is the Indian swimmer and more importantly his or her family.
Indian swimming parents suffer immense hardships in terms of financial, physical and emotional turmoil as they strive to enable the dreams of their talented wards.
The parents wake up at ungodly hours to take their kids to swimming, cooking meals at all times to ensure adequate nourishment, working hard with kids to ensure academic success, burn through their savings or corpus to enable training or travel, change their lifestyles to match the needs of their swimmer kids, and finally sacrifice any sort of social engagements – in terms of meeting up with relatives or friends. Every penny and every minute of an Indian swimming parent is consumed by the sport — only to be able to see their kid perform good and be a better sportsperson.
The big question is what does the parent (or for that matter the family) get on return for all these sacrifices? Absolutely Nothing!
Only select swimmers are able to continue with sponsorships and funding provided by bodies like Khelo India, TOPS scheme or Go Sports Foundation.
The administrative bodies that are supposed to shepherding the cause of Indian swimming are dull, jaded, archaic and uninspired. Most of the senior administrators in such bodies are people with little experience as swimmers, and belong to a time and age suited for the previous century. They function in a very obtuse and ad hoc manner with little regards to any troubles that might be caused by their decisions to the present or the future of the young swimmers.
As a result of all such issues, there is only a handful of swimmers who can claim to be world-class and compete at international levels. All the representation is done by a small subset, who have survived the grind or have been selected by a biased organisation.
Isn’t it a damnful commentary, that forget about the next Michael Phelps, next Caleb Dressel, next Ian Thorpe, next Adam Peaty, we are yet to even figure out who are the next Sajan Prakash, next Virdhawal Khade, next Srihari Nataraj, next Rehan Poncha, next Nisha Millet. A country of over one billion people, a nation that is surrounded by water on three sides, a land that values and worships rivers, is so terrible at swimming that every 4 years, we struggle to make it to even get cut-off (A-Cut) timings to be able to compete in the Olympics. India has the largest number of young people on the planet, more than any other country, and yet there are no young swimming talent that is coming out this country. Were to rank the countries in the world based on the swmining performance in comparison to its population, Indian swimming will be at the rock-bottom.
So what is the solution or is there really one? Indeed. There is one, collective power and collective action. Till now, one of the key stakeholders of equation, namely the swimming parents have had no say at all to the proceedings. They have been mute witness and victims to consequences of the actions borne by others, be it administration, associations or even the clubs. The few times that they have come together, the results have been encouraging.
While parents compete like swimmers, it is pertinent that they should also get together for the greater good of the sports. Once the parents are united and have a say, they can then bring about change.
To that end — there is an effort being put together by a set of swimming parents, in terms of creating a collective — a voluntary and independent body that will represent the voice of the parents. If you are interested to be a part of these efforts and be part of the efforts to change the sports — click on the registration form and share your details.
