Monday, August 13, 2012  Why is India's Olympic Output so
Dismal? The Student Perspective  At the 2012 Summery Olympics,
India won 4 bronze medals, 2 silver, and zero gold. How can 20%
of humanity win barely 0.003% of its Summer Olympic medals?  For
most of modern Olympic history, the excuse given was that India
was poor and undernourished; although poorer countries were/are
faring better. Now, with a booming economy and an emerging
middle class, many with first world problems, new fallacies have
emerged.   The NYT India Blog claims claims that is a cultural
issue "School-age children are encouraged to study hard, and
parents often see sports as an unwanted intrusion on academics".
Actually, school-age children in India are encouraged to study
hard, but the extra pressure is a consequence of other problems
in India's higher education. - a result of of generations of bad
policies.  First, decades of bad policies have ensured that
there simply aren't enough university seats to go around. About
8 million studen