Paris, the romantic capital of the world, has now switched sides and is staging a global sporting extravaganza where the inequality of Black and White nations is very visible, with money and resources showing who can excel in sport.
India now has both but rarely makes a mark at the Olympics as it has no sport infrastructure except for cricket. India’s education factory is for the technocrats and rarely encourages anything else, often discouraging creativity and physicality, and excluding culture altogether.
Sport is very important for children. It gives them the opportunity to build their physical strength, challenge their inhibitions and grow their confidence. It also helps build social skills and teamwork is very important to experience when you are young. This is how hope and positivity can be nurtured from the ground up. Sport is the one area where a 10-year-old can beat a 30-year-old person flat. I have seen sporty students with confidence also excelling in education as they are not afraid of adults or higher knowledge.
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We have to rise above and beyond our narrow confines and challenge ourselves if we want to avoid mediocrity and complacency. I see in entrepreneurship that willingness to compete and the confidence to grow, but once the money is made and success achieved the competition is narrowed and power, ego and status take over. There is no strategy for giving and sharing even when rich people want to be admired and publicly applauded for being ‘successful’. This is shameful when there is so much inequality in the world and so much hopelessness for children. So many entrepreneurs stop rising once they have made it and feel increasingly insecure and suspicious of others.
Let the Olympic Torch remind us of our deep inequalities and instead of celebrating the rich and mighty nations of the world, let us do something for sport or health and wellbeing locally. We can and we must aspire to serve and rest not in our comforts but reach out through our wisdom and leadership.
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No ifs and buts please. Wealth can easily become illth if we choose not to care.
Professor Atul K. Shah [@atulkshah] teaches and writes about Indian wisdom on business, culture and community at various UK universities and is a renowned international author, speaker and broadcaster.