The podium that India doesn’t need to be on

Sprawling stadiums and state-of-the-art training facilities aren’t the only things that go into the making of a sporting nation with grand ambitions. Behind the impressive facade of modern infrastructure, the house needs to be squeaky clean. The alarmingly long list of those who have been caught doping can’t be brushed under the carpet. India was made to realise this by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an independent anti-doping watchdog founded by World Athletics, when it flagged its inadequate anti-doping programme. It was also a wake-up call for the government and sports officials tasked with preparing a pitch for the country to host the 2036 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee members, and rivals who are in the race to host the Games, won’t be blind to India being one of the top two nations globally for doping offences in athletics from 2022 to 2025.

Downgrading the Athletics Federation of India, the AIU had said that the Indian athletes were at “extremely high” risk of doping. This translates to India’s track-and-field participants in international events being made to undergo mandatory and extensive testing. This was a setback to a nation that had carved a new image for itself when Neeraj Chopra won the javelin gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Pulling down the new emerging athletic nation are the doping test results at India’s junior and senior national and state-level competitions. There has been rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs among those aspiring to get government jobs or hoping for monetary incentives for state- and district-level winners.

Whenever India has found itself cornered because of a high-profile doping scandal or a rap by international anti-doping bodies for not doing enough, it has come up with familiar but ineffective solutions. There is talk about educating the athletes, conducting talk sessions and making them aware of the health risks. While those seminars and workshops should continue, more needs to be done. A part of what is spent on big sporting infrastructure projects needs to be channelled to anti-doping programmes. Unless a holistic plan to curb doping from the grassroots to the top level is carefully formulated and rigorously implemented, including targeted out-of-competition testing, the stain of doping won’t go away. This is a dubious podium, and India doesn’t need to be on it.