On Sunday, Indian cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar accepted an invitation from the Indian Olympic Association to become a Goodwill Ambassador of the Indian contingent to the upcoming 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero. Tendulkar is not alone – he joins the ranks of Abhinav Bindra, an Olympic gold-medallist shooter and Hindi film actor Salman Khan. Music composer AR Rahman has also been extended an invitation to be a cheerleader for the team.

The appointment has raised several questions, one of which is: What exactly will these Goodwill Ambassadors do? The Indian Olympic Association has not addressed this specifically. But when criticised for appointing Salman Khan, it vaguely defended itself by talking about how Khan would popularise Olympic sports in the country.

But all said and done, with the way the Indian Olympic Association is going about things, there is a distinct possibility that at the end of the games, India would have more Goodwill Ambassadors than medal-winners.

Perhaps rather than extending more energy on public relations exercises, the Indian Olympic Association could think about fixing these problems.

1. The mess within its own ranks
In December 2012, the International Olympic Association, the governing body of the Olympic Games, banned the Indian Olympic Association for allowing an election, tainted with irregularities, to take place. This led to a two-year ban on Indian athletes competing under the national flag in international events. The ban was only lifted in February 2014 when the Indian organisation, after much dilly-dallying, held a fresh election in which Narayana Ramachandran was elected president.

But that doesn’t mean things have got better. In September 2015, the Delhi High Court delivered a scathing verdict against Ramachandran, calling on India’s sports ministry to take back his Rashtriya Khel Protshan Puraskar award after he was found guilty of making false claims about his contributions to the sport of squash.

In fact, there is severe infighting within the Indian Olympic Association. Many affiliated sports federations have tried over the last year to oust Ramachandran as president. Hockey India president Narinder Batra even alleged that the Indian Olympic Association president had offered money to vote for him. But Ramachandran continues to remain president of both the Indian Olympic Association and the World Squash Federation in what is a very definite conflict of interest.

2. (Actually) giving Indian athletes a chance to qualify
Amiya Kumar Mallick and Srabani Nanda, both young promising athletes from Odisha, could have qualified for the Olympics last Sunday. In the 100 metres men’s dash at the Indian Grand Prix at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi, Mallick clocked 10.09 seconds; in the women’s dash, Nanda clocked 11.23 seconds. Both the timings were well above Olympic qualifying standards.

The only hitch? A power cut at the venue ensured that the athletes’ timings could only be recorded manually, which could not be considered for Olympic qualification, according to the rules. Because of his avoidable error, two young athletes missed out on what should have been one of the greatest moments of their careers. As it happens in this country, the organisers were busy passing the buck – the Athletics Federation of India blamed the Delhi Sports Federation, the Delhi body blamed the Sports Authority of India.

Two days later at the same venue, four athletes were asked to stop their training for the Olympics so that a film shoot starring Salman Khan could proceed unhindered.

3. Bickering and factionalism in its affiliated units
If the Indian Olympic isn't able to get its house in order, one reason may be the fact that the national sports federations that are affiliated to it are also in major crisis.

India does not have a recognised boxing federation since the Indian Boxing Federation was suspended in 2012 by the world body, the International Boxing Association. Since then, Indian boxing has been in turmoil, run by an ad-hoc committee appointed by the world governing body. Indian boxing faces a race against time – if they are unable to form a new federation by May 14, India’s lone boxer who has qualified for the Olympics this year Shiv Thapa runs the risk of expulsion.

Other Indian Olympic Association-affiliated federations that have been derecognised by the Union sports ministry include the All India Tennis Federation, the Basketball Federation of India and the Gymnastics Federations of India. The reasons for their non-recognition are the sort of stuff that Indian sport watchers have become painfully accustomed to hearing about – infighting and factionalism. But the biggest victims are the athletes who are forced to play out their careers amid uncertainty and crisis.