In 2030, the nation will welcome athletes from more than 70 countries, as Ahmedabad hosts the centenary Commonwealth Games. 

Meanwhile, the Indian Olympic Association has submitted a Letter of Intent (LoI) with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the 2036 Olympics and a proposal with the Olympic Council of Asia for the 2038 Asian Games. 

Does this signal Bharat’s rise from a spectator and participant to a global sporting power, or merely the largest hosting bill in our history?

The question that should preoccupy New Delhi is not whether India can stage a world-class Games — cities far poorer have done so — but whether India can use these three events to build a genuine sporting civilisation. 

This assumes salience because of the dismal performance of India so far at the Olympic stage.

The Asian Mirror 

Asia has hosted the Summer Olympics four times — in Tokyo (1964), in Seoul (1988), Beijing (2008), and in Tokyo again in 2020 — across three nations. Each of them served a different national purpose, and each is instructive for India.

Beyond the Summer Games, Asia hosted the Winter Games at Sapporo (1972), Nagano (1998), PyeongChang (2018), and Beijing (2022), and the Youth Olympics in Singapore (2010) and Nanjing (2014). 

Among developing nations, the 1968 Summer Games held in Mexico City left a contested legacy. Brazil’s Rio 2016, the first Summer Games on South American soil, ran up an officially admitted bill of about US$7.4 billion; the Maracanã and most of the Olympic Park became, within a year, what one Brazilian newspaper called a ghost town. 

The pattern is consistent: a developing host gains visibility and modernisation; it struggles with operating costs, post-Games venue utilisation, and political legitimacy. 

India’s Starting Point — The Honest Diagnosis

India enters this race from a deeply asymmetric base. Its US$4.15 trillion economy is the sixth largest in the world. When Japan hosted the 1964 Games, it was the fourth-largest economy, and when South Korea hosted the Games in 1988, it was the world’s 17th largest economy.

Also, India is in the unprecedented demographic dividend phase: 65% of its population is under 35. As such, India’s bid for the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games has not come any sooner.

Across 124 years since its debut participation in 1900, India has won just 41 medals, with only 10 gold. China won 40 gold (and a total of 91 medals) at the Paris 2024 Olympics alone. South Korea, with one-twentieth of India’s population, has won 145 gold medals against India’s 10. 

The country’s fundamental sporting problem is existential and structural, not athletic. 

India’s sports sector contributes merely 0.1% to GDP — mostly from cricket and IPL revenue — against a global average of 0.5%. The Sports Ministry budget is just between 0.02%-0.04% of total Union expenditure. The country remains among the worst international offenders in anti-doping violations, with the IOC suspending all funding and grants to the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) in October 2024. 

These are foundations to be rebuilt before they crack under three sequential mega-events. But the biggest issue remains: the budget. 

What Can Be Done

 First, a statutory and policy reset is imperative. 

The National Sports Policy (NSP) was launched only in 1984. The latest and most significant development is the National Sports Policy (NSP) 2025 (also known as the Khelo Bharat Niti), approved on July 1, 2025.

But what are the lacunae, and what must change?

The fundamental lacunae in India’s sports architecture rest on a constitutional anomaly: under the Seventh Schedule, sports is a State subject while almost every international obligation is at the Union level. 

Moving Sports To Concurrent List

Sports must be moved to the Concurrent List through a constitutional amendment, allowing parliamentary legislation while preserving state initiative. 

The National Sports Governance Act 2025, notified on 18 August 2025 (partially operationalised on January 1, 2026), must be fully operationalised, as it imposes term limits, financial disclosure, and athlete representation on all federation boards. 

Then, the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) must be given genuine prosecutorial independence. Khelo India and Khelo India Tribal Games infrastructure must be classified under the National Infrastructure Pipeline. 

Most importantly, a dedicated, non-fungible, and non-lapsable Sports Fund, with a dedicated funding source, must be created.

Second, an institutional reset is a prerequisite. 

Statutes do not produce medals; institutions do. The biggest institutional gap is the absence of a permanent, professionally staffed High-Performance Directorate independent of the Sports Authority of India’s (SAI) bureaucracy. India’s Target Olympic Podium Scheme is not yet an institution. 

Equally important is a research backbone: a National Centre for Sports Science and Performance, regional High Altitude Training Centres, a statutory Sports Medicine Council, and a pipeline that survives the dropouts that today claim 49% of girl athletes by adolescence. 

Attitudinal Reset

Third, we need a cultural and attitudinal reset.

India’s deepest sporting deficit is attitudinal, captured in the proverb, “Padhoge likhoge banoge nawab, kheloge kudoge banoge kharab.” In a society that prizes academics over sporting achievement, the parent who tells a child to put down football is acting rationally within an irrational system. 

The architecture of incentives must change. Public sector recruitment quotas for athletes — already used by Indian Railways and the armed forces — should be expanded across the Union and the states. The Central Bureau of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), which are the education boards, should integrate sports as a graded, weighted subject under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Corporations should be permitted to claim Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) credit against funding athletes and coaches. 

Fourth, the architecture must be reimagined. 

The Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Sports Enclave around Motera must not become a single-use monument. India’s venue masterplan must mandate, at the design stage, 80% post-Games utilisation. 

Tokyo 1964 gave Japan the Shinkansen; Seoul 1988, the Han River redevelopment; and Beijing 2008, the modern metro. 

Ahmedabad 2030 and a putative 2036 Games should bequeath India an integrated multi-modal transport system across Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Vadodara, and Ekta Nagar; a coastal aquatic-sports hub on the Saurashtra coast; and the world’s largest network of Khelo India Centres at the panchayat level. 

Done well, these become public goods that outlive every medal.

Fifth, it is the ethos.

India’s sequential hosting of the 2030 Commonwealth Games, the prospective 2036 Olympics, and the 2038 Asian Games is, at its highest pitch, an opportunity to make a comparable civilisational statement: that a billion-and-a-half people can compete, fairly and at scale, at the global stage. 

But the statement will be made only if the nation resists the easiest temptation — to confuse hosting with achievement. 

The Glasgow vote of November 2025 has bought India eleven years. They will pass quickly.

The difference between hosting an event and becoming a sporting nation, as Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing each learned in turn, is the difference between a moment and a legacy. India has both the moment and the means. Whether it has the will is the only question that matters.

(The writer is a former civil servant. Views expressed are personal.)