Lacklustre showing: India's performance at Glasgow Games is an indictment of the country's sports system

There are two ways of looking at India's performance at the just concluded Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The more charitable view is that Indian athletes made significant strides in a few events. This would include Dipa Karmakar's bronze medal in the women's vault event and Vikas Gowda's gold medal in men's discus. Dipika Pallikal and Joshana Chinappa winning the women's squash doubles gold was a first for the country, while P Kashyap became the first Indian male shuttler to win the gold in men's badminton in 32 years.

That said, India's 64 medals — out of which 15 were gold — capped a lacklustre Games campaign. In fact, this was India's worst performance at the quadrennial sporting event in terms of gold medals won since 1998. Seen in this context, the performance of Indian athletes at the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games — where they had won a record 101 medals with 38 golds — was an anomaly. This also means that in the last four years Indian sport has lost considerable momentum, placing a huge question mark on the Delhi Games' legacy.

Notwithstanding the fact that four years ago India had a much larger contingent and many more events to win medals in, it's clear that Indian sport has failed to use Delhi Games as a springboard to emerge as a sporting powerhouse. Much of the assets created in 2010 haven't been utilised properly, while funding for athletes through the public-private partnership route provided incremental returns. The root cause of the malaise, however, is Indian sports officialdom. As long as sports federations remain cesspools of politics and nepotism, the interests of Indian athletes will continue to suffer.

This was amply demonstrated with the temporary suspension of the Indian Olympic Association from the Olympic movement for 14 months, as well as ongoing suspension of the Indian boxing federation by its international parent body. Both cases saw sports administrators indulge in politicking and factionalism that left athletes high and dry. In fact, it's because of the boxing federation's suspension that Indian pugilists couldn't compete in preparatory competitions ahead of Glasgow. Such disregard for athletes reinforces the perception of a decrepit sports system where administrators are only interested in freeloading and end up bringing disrepute through their conduct, as two officials have done at Glasgow. For a country of 1.2 billion people with huge sporting potential, that's shameful.

(This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India)