Doping In Indian Sports Continues Unabated: What Can WADA, NADA Do?

Success, then the accusations of doping, followed by denials and of course, feigning ignorance. This is one script that never goes out of fashion in Indian sport. With another big sporting event coming up, the scourge of doping has already reared its ugly head. Cliche, for sure! But read it together with WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) reports, then it becomes all the more damaging. (More Sports News)

On Monday, reports emerged that a Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022-bound Indian athlete will be dropped from the roster after testing positive for a banned drug. The Commonwealth Games 2022 starts in three days, on July 28. There is no official communication from the officials yet, but the athlete is believed to be a member of the women's 4x100m relay team.

This revelation came a few days after two other athletes -- sprinter Sekar Dhanalakshmi and triple jumper Aishwarya Babu -- were removed from the Indian contingent after returning positive tests for banned drugs.

Doping, indeed is India's scourge. For a country bidding to become a global superpower in sports, its many doping escapades have already done enough damage. Considering the recent spate of doping cases, the situation is likely to get worse. The rot runs deep and it will take years, even decades, to clean it up.

Cheating In India Ingrained?

India is already one of the top-three anti-doping violators in the world. A WADA report published in December 2021 revealed that as many as 152 Anti-doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) were reported/committed in India in 2019 -- which is about 17 per cent of the total global transgressions. In the previous report (2018), India was fourth with 107 ADRVs, only behind Russia (144), Italy (132) and France (114). Now, India is third, but fast catching up with Russia (167) and Italy (157).

It shouldn't come as a surprise though. Indian athletes are habitual offenders when it comes to taking performance-enhancing drugs. Since 2013, India has always found itself among the top ten countries in the list of WADA ADRV reports -- third from 2013 to 2015, joint-sixth in 2016, and seventh in 2017. But the veritable return in this period = a grand total of nine Olympic medals during this said period. Putting in a not-so-subtle way, India were 48th at the Tokyo Olympics with seven medals (one gold, two silver, four bronze), but third on the world doping list. Damning!

Still a lightweight in global sports, India usually harvests enough medals in Asian Games and Commonwealth Games and boasts about its growing stature as a sporting country. But once the competition becomes global, the returns get diminished. Unfortunately though. doping stories hit headlines on a consistent basis. With the postponed Asian Games scheduled for 2023 and Paris Olympics in 2024, one can embarrassingly concede that there will be more cases of doping in India.

Troubled past

For the record, the first time Indian athletes tested positive for doping was in 1986, at the Seoul Asian Games. Weightlifters N.G. Naidu, Balwinder Singh and Tara Singh, and boxer Daljit Singh were banned. But it's widely believed that doping in Indian sports was already widespread, with the country hosting the Asian Games in 1982. After all, national pride was at stake. Some regimes even resorted to state-sponsored doping programs, with Russia being the best example. Also, many blamed the arrival of coaches from the erstwhile Soviet Bloc. Then the list keeps growing.

Some of the high-profile doping cases were related to prominent names, like those of discus throwers Seema Antil, Neelam J. Singh, Kamalpreet Kaur; weightlifters Nameirakpam Kunjarani Devi, Sateesha Rai, K. Madasamy; swimmer Arjun Muralidharan; javelin thrower Shivpal Singh, Rajender Singh; wrestlers Narsingh Yadav, Sumit Malik. And recently M.R. Poovamma, S. Dhanalakshmi and Aishwarya Babu.

Ironically though India, in 2020, pledged WADA a "one-off" support of USD 1 million, "the highest among contributions made by other world governments, including China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt," to make sports clean, globally.

The then-sports minister, Minister Kiren Rijiju wrote to WADA president Witold Banka stating, "I am happy to share with you that the Government of India is pledging a "one-off" financial support of $1 million to this WADA Fund for scientific R&D and (I&I) with the hope that this contribution from India will boost the efforts to achieve the target of $10 million for this fund."

It was another matter though that at that time, India's National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) was in suspension. Its accreditation was only restored in December 2021. NDTL's certification was first suspended in August 2019 for six months for non-compliance, then extended.

India Needs More And More Testing

With a functional and compliant anti-doping body in place, India can hope to cure this malaise. In fact, NADA has been aggressive in testing and sample collection, even covering grassroot level. But that fact cannot cover the fact that India's doping record is dubious. Then again, cheating can only be curbed by keeping a tight vigil.

That's what the government is planning to do, by empowering NADA. One of the bills likely to be tabled in the ongoing Monsoon session of Parliament is the National Anti-Doping Bill, which was referred to a standing committee following its introduction in the Lok Sabha last year.

To the core, the bill seeks to give NADA powers of "investigation, levying sanctions for Anti-Doping Rule Violations, the disciplinary procedures to be adopted and the powers of inspection, sample collection and sharing and free flow of information."

It also proposes to provide NADA the power of "entry, search and seizure by any person authorised by the agency for the purpose of determining if any anti-doping rule violation has been committed".

Meanwhile, Ritu Sain, the new director general of the NADA, has set out a clear path to bring transparency and accountability.

"My vision is to reach out to all relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem with a clear awareness programme,” she told New Indian Express. "Testing is an important deliverable. But we want to be fair and leverage technology to embrace transparency and accountability. We need to reach out to where a discourse of interaction begins in schools and institutions."

But an agency can only do this much. Sport remains quietly an individual pursuit. It's up to the individual to stay clean and believe in fair play. Then, there is also the lure of fame and material rewards.