MELBOURNE: A Buddhist monk, displaying uncommon wisdom, said before the 1992 Olympics about the participating athletes: "More will lose than win." But few listen or care, and as the Commonwealth Games commences on Wednesday, countries, including India, will fluctuate between national loathing and self-congratulation, depending on where we stand on the medal table.

Entire national well-beings apparently rest on how far up or down that list a country sits. Occasionally it seems the United Nations Human Development Index doesn't get such scrutiny.

Everyone interprets medal tables the way they want. Under-populated Australia will swamp these Games but at the Olympics prefers the medals-per-million index, a method understandably not fancied in over-populated India, for using that calculation at Athens 2004 we were last. Of course, if we were to calculate medals per GDP another picture emerges, with Eritrea topping the Athens 2004 rankings.

But no one has yet done a study on medals won in proportion to a country's investment in sport. After all, medals cost big money and England already is debating how much extra funding might be required to get to a particular place on the medal list for the 2012 Olympics.

Different priorities

Swimming pools must be built, hyperbaric chambers bought, professional sports science back-up required, and somehow you feel this is not quite the priority in Sierra Leone or Swaziland. If physical structure plays a part as sport turns more powerful, so does culture, for while sport is a national fixation in Australia, in India academics remains the priority.

It makes it hard to judge our athletes at these Games, most of whom will return without medals, but does that automatically qualify them as failures and liable for criticism?

India has sent a contingent over 180 athletes to Melbourne, firm believer as it is in Baron Pierre de Coubertin's dictum that "it's not the winning that matters, but the taking part." This is mostly excused, for, if nations only sent athletes capable of winning medals, it would defeat the inclusive purpose of these Games.

But eventually, athletes, even those not in medal contention, must believe they have earned their place; nations, too, must believe that the selection of those that represent them is a reward for effort not an entitlement. Tax payers are not encouraged by paying for sight-seeing trips.

Beyond the measuring stick of medals, perhaps one way to judge India's athletes is to see how they perform in the glare of the international arena in comparison to their previous best.

Eventually, the athlete competes not just with others but with the self, propelled by individual pride to push himself forward to a point where even if a medal cannot be won he has gained an exquisite personal victory. A quicker sprint timing than before, a higher shooting score, a better hockey placing. This is success of a type, too.

Ultimate test

National titles are important, but bettering, or even replicating, form in major Games, in unfamiliar surroundings, under the searching scrutiny of the world, is the ultimate examination. It is where character is revealed most nakedly.

Young athletes, for instance, deserve exposure, but even with them it must be noted, what preparation they do, how they manage psychologically and whether in fact potential, to whatever degree, is being realised.

Medals will always matter to us, and here, too, India must strive at least to match, if not better, its fourth place in Manchester 2002 with 69 medals, to reassure itself that whatever its circumstances an athletic evolution is under way.

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