Watch: The Modi speech from 2013 that explained how India can win Olympic medals
The answer, it seems, is to get the armed forces involved.
The fact that India – the country with the largest youth population in the world – doesn’t win too many medals at the Olympics is a sore point. Lack of funding and inadequate infrastructure are only a few of the things that plague Indian athletes.
This lack of results is also something that seems to have long bothered India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In July 2013, a year before he was elected, Modi gave a speech at Ferguson College in Pune, two days after he gave the infamous interview about being a Hindu nationalist and comparing puppies and the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Here’s his take (video above) on how India could win more medals at future Olympic games, “During Olympics, people often say that despite its huge size, we don’t get medals. Have we linked sports with our education system? Did we give enough opportunity to our youth...? Believe me if you just give our defence forces this responsibility and match the potential of the new recruits in the interested sports and then train them properly, we will earn 5-7 medals even without much efforts. It requires vision!”
Perhaps the Modi Administration has kept the Indian army too busy to focus on sports development.
Here's the speech in full. Modi speaks about the Olympics at the 33-minute point.