When the monarch wanted to take down by a peg or two a courtier who had got too uppity, he would bestow a white elephant upon the object of his displeasure. Extremely rare, white elephants were deemed to be auspicious but were also ruinously costly to maintain. Unable to refuse the purported honour being done to him, the hapless giftee would have to accept the priceless pachyderm, which would, eventually and inevitably, reduce him to penury, much to the satisfaction of the royal donor of the high-maintenance Heffalump.
Like the fabled white elephant, the Olympic Games can be a bane in the guise of a boon. While hosting the Games is deemed a matter of great national pride and a cock-a-hoop feather in the country’s cap, the five-ring circus of the Olympics, representing the five continents, is a hugely costly show to stage.
Stadiums must be built, along with residential and boarding facilities for the competitors and their entourage of trainers, coaches, and hangers-on. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics carried a price tag of $13 billion, twice the amount anticipated in 2013 when the city was awarded the Games. In the history of the modern Olympics, it is only the Los Angeles Games of 1984 that made a small profit of $215 million on an investment of several billions.
So why do countries willingly, indeed eagerly, lumber themselves with this metaphoric white elephant? For long-term benefits, such as increased revenue from tourists who flock to see all those swank stadiums and other games-related facilities? A dubious proposition. The Beijing Olympics saw a drop in tourism, suggesting that the benefit calculus of the long run might be of marathon length.
Apart from chest-thumping and nationalistic grandstanding, there seems to be little reason to be gung-ho about hosting the Games. But in its desire to be the host with the most in the 2036 Olympics, India might well have an ace or three up its sleeve of entrepreneurial inventiveness.This might be in the form of a run-up to the Games, which would cash in on the competitiveness of the building contractors, TV channels, soft drink-makers, and others who will all vie with each other for a slice of the Olympic publicity and profit pie. Those who would be in the bidding for building contracts could be asked to send their sales teams to participate in a track-and-field event, involving successfully navigating a series of hurdles made of red tape, representing in physical form the obstacle course they would have to metaphorically run to bag tenders and strike gold, so to speak.Similarly, TV channels wanting exclusive coverage of the Games could be tasked to compete against each other by doing the pole vault to determine who had the highest contacts, in more ways than one, in the corridors of power to clinch the deal.
A gymnastic display in which entrants would bend over backwards, perform somersaults, and showcase other acrobatic skills involved in the art of kowtowing to win friends and influential people could be another event.
In a variant of the hammer throw, participants could throw a spanner, of the kind said to be thrown in the works of adversaries, for winning contracts, and a javelin contest could show how entrants could spike the competition in the gamesmanship behind the Games.
By organising such gate money-raising rehearsals for the big show, the local sports body could raise much-needed funds to subsidise the final event and demonstrate that, thanks to Olympinomics, the tamasha can be not just fun and Games, but also fun and gains.
