बेबाक · Editorial
Asian Para Games: 114 medals from a leaner squad should now build a lasting system
India won more at Aichi-Nagoya with far fewer athletes. The result deserves pride, but it should also lead to transparent selection, steady jobs and a deeper para-sport pipeline.
What Aichi-Nagoya showed
India's campaign at the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya is a real achievement and should be recognised as one. The medal count reached 114, six more than the team's previous best. Haryana's Sumit Antil defended his title in the men's javelin F64 category, and Indian shuttlers ruled the badminton court. The tally is a long way from the 14 medals India once won at these Games. What matters most is how the result was achieved. India sent 167 athletes, 111 men and 56 women, across 11 sports, compared with the 309 athletes listed for Hangzhou in 2023. Para sport in India is no longer a side story. It has become an increasingly important source of the country's international success.
The lean-squad question
The headline figure invites an easy reading, that a smaller squad simply meant smarter sport. That is possible, but it is not yet proven, and the distinction matters. Winning more with fewer athletes can mean that selectors identified genuine medal prospects and concentrated coaching, equipment and travel on them. It can also mean that developing athletes, newly classified competitors and women in thinner categories were never given international exposure. Women made up only about a third of the 167-member contingent. A medal table records who stood on the podium. It does not record who was left at home, or whether excluding them was a sound judgement or merely a budget decision.
Both cases, fairly stated
The argument for a lean squad is strong. Para athletes need specialised prosthetics, classifiers, accessible travel and individual coaching. Spreading limited resources across a much larger contingent may dilute the support that turns a finalist into a champion, and the Aichi-Nagoya returns suggest that focus can work. The argument for breadth is just as serious. Para sport depends on early identification, because many athletes come to it late, after illness or injury. They need competition at continental level to learn their classification and improve. A system that sends only near-certain medallists may produce this cycle's champions but starve the next cycle of them. Neither approach is wrong in principle. The test is whether selection decisions are based on published criteria that athletes can see and challenge.
The life beyond the podium
The athletes' stories show where the gaps may lie. Reports on Suvarna Raj, who has lived with polio since childhood, describe a gold medal won in Nagoya after a break from sport for motherhood and a return to competition. They also describe job offers from two states, followed by confusion over which to join. Recognition is welcome, but offers that arrive only after a medal, and leave an athlete uncertain about her next step, suggest that the system is better at rewarding results than at planning careers. Pankaj Advani, reflecting after his 29th world title and 21st World Billiards Championship crown, has said that India needs to follow its athletes. Para athletes in particular need that sustained attention. Their training costs and medical needs do not end when the cameras leave.
What should follow
Three steps are feasible before the next cycle. First, the selection criteria for Aichi-Nagoya, and the basis on which athletes were left out, should be published sport by sport, so that the lean-squad model can be judged on evidence rather than on the medal count alone. Second, the Union government and the states should agree a common framework for employing para-medallists, with clear eligibility, posting and training-leave rules, so that champions are not left choosing between competing offers. Third, multi-sport events that states are already preparing, such as the Khelo India Games that Telangana will host from December 11 to 22, should consider including para events and classification camps. The pipeline should begin there, well before the podium.
A medal is a moment; a job, a coach and a clear selection rule are what turn one champion into a generation.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the Aad Tak desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →