top of page

By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same...

Applause for Cricket, Silence for Badminton

Mumbai: When Lakshya Sen walked off the court after the final of the All England Badminton Championships, he carried with him the disappointment of another near miss. The Indian shuttler went down in straight games to Lin Chun-Yi, who created history by becoming the first player from Chinese Taipei to lift the prestigious title. But the story of Lakshya Sen’s defeat is not merely about badminton final. It is also about the contrasting way India celebrates its sporting heroes. Had the same narrative unfolded on a cricket field, the reaction would have been dramatically different. In cricket, even defeat often becomes a story of heroism. A hard-fought loss by the Indian team can dominate television debates, fill newspaper columns and trend across social media for days. A player who narrowly misses a milestone is still hailed for his fighting spirit. The nation rallies around its cricketers not only in victory but also in defeat. The narrative quickly shifts from the result to the effort -- the resilience shown, the fight put up, the promise of future triumph. This emotional investment is one of the reasons cricket enjoys unparalleled popularity in India. It has built a culture where players become household names and their performances, good or bad, become part of the national conversation. Badminton Fights Contrast that with what happens in sports like badminton. Reaching the final of the All England Championships is a monumental achievement. The tournament is widely considered badminton’s equivalent of Wimbledon in prestige and tradition. Only the very best players manage to reach its final stages, and doing it twice speaks volumes about Lakshya Sen’s ability and consistency. Yet the reaction in India remained largely subdued. There were congratulatory posts, some headlines acknowledging the effort and brief discussions among badminton enthusiasts. But the level of national engagement never quite matched the magnitude of the achievement. In a cricketing context, reaching such a stage would have triggered days of celebration and analysis. In badminton, it often becomes just another sports update. Long Wait India’s wait for an All England champion continues. The last Indian to win the title was Pullela Gopichand in 2001. Before him, Prakash Padukone had scripted history in 1980. These victories remain among the most significant milestones in Indian badminton. And yet, unlike cricketing triumphs that are frequently revisited and celebrated, such achievements rarely stay in the mainstream sporting conversation for long. Lakshya Sen’s journey to the final should ideally have been viewed as a continuation of that legacy, a reminder that India still possesses the talent to challenge the world’s best in badminton. Instead, it risks fading quickly from public memory. Visibility Gap The difference ultimately comes down to visibility and cultural investment. Cricket in India is not merely a sport; it is an ecosystem built over decades through media attention, sponsorship, and mass emotional attachment. Individual sports, on the other hand, often rely on momentary bursts of recognition, usually during Olympic years or when a medal is won. But consistent performers like Lakshya Sen rarely receive the sustained spotlight that their achievements deserve. This disparity can also influence the next generation. Young athletes are naturally drawn to sports where success brings recognition, financial stability and national fame. When one sport monopolises the spotlight, others struggle to build similar appeal. Beyond Result Lakshya Sen may have finished runner-up again, but his performance at the All England Championship is a reminder that India continues to produce world-class athletes in disciplines beyond cricket. The real issue is not that cricket receives immense attention -- it deserves the admiration it gets. The concern is that athletes from other sports often do not receive comparable appreciation for achievements that are equally significant in their own arenas. If India aspires to become a truly global sporting nation, its applause must grow broader. Sporting pride cannot remain confined to one field. Because somewhere on a badminton court, an athlete like Lakshya Sen is fighting just as hard for the country’s colours as any cricketer on a packed stadium pitch. The only difference is how loudly the nation chooses to cheer.

Growth With Caveats

While India enters the year with enviable economic momentum, a long list of reforms still awaits completion.

January has a way of sharpening economic judgment. Companies tally their third-quarter results and sketch full-year ambitions while governments begin aligning policy signals and spending priorities for the next fiscal year. But before gazing ahead, India must reckon with the year just gone - a period that offered reassurance about the economy’s resilience even as it exposed stubborn structural gaps.


The global backdrop was hardly comforting. Growth remained uneven, with the IMF estimating world output at 3.2 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025. Manufacturing continued to labour under supply-chain disruptions and trade frictions, while services proved more resilient. Geopolitics distorted commerce and capital flows, rewarding caution over exuberance. Against this unsettled canvas, India’s performance was respectable rather than spectacular. Growth slowed to 6.2 percent in the second quarter of FY25. Retail inflation averaged 4.9 percent, but food prices rose by a sharper 8.4 percent as erratic monsoons took their toll.


Ambitious Aims

The Economic Survey 2024–25 responded with ambition rather than defensiveness. Its lodestar was Viksit Bharat 2047: an India without extreme poverty, with universal access to education and healthcare, a fully skilled workforce, female labour-force participation of 70 percent, and a credible claim to being the world’s food basket. To reach a five-trillion-dollar economy by FY28 and Rs. 6.3 trillion by FY30, the Survey argued that India would need sustained nominal growth of 10 percent and real growth of about 8 percent. The chosen lever was deregulation. “Ease of Doing Business 2.0” was presented as a corrective to what the Survey identified as the economy’s chief constraint: regulatory overreach rather than fiscal or monetary tightness.


Four vulnerabilities framed the diagnosis. Manufacturing accounts for only 2.8 percent of global output, compared with China’s 28.8 percent. Credit to GDP, at 93 percent, suggests room for financial deepening. India depends on China for more than 90 percent of its rare-earth magnet imports, a strategic weakness disguised for too long by benign trade. The demographic window is both a gift and a threat as by 2026, some 923.9 million Indians will be of working age, demanding jobs at a pace institutions have yet to master.


Farm output was strong, with rural and urban consumption gaps narrowing, labour-force participation rising as unemployment fell to 3.2 percent. Banks enjoyed their cleanest balance-sheets in a decade, though stress was creeping into microfinance and unsecured retail lending.


The Union Budget sought to convert diagnosis into direction. Fiscal discipline was preserved: expenditure was set at Rs. 50.65 lakh crore, receipts at Rs. 34.96 lakh crore, and the deficit guided down to 4.4 percent of GDP under the FRBM path. Agriculture received a boost through the Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana for 100 low-productivity districts and a mission for self-reliance in pulses. MSMEs were courted with higher classification thresholds and expanded credit guarantees, unlocking an estimated Rs. 1.5 lakh crore of incremental lending. Public capital expenditure, at Rs. 10.18 lakh crore, remained the economy’s flywheel, complemented by a Rs. 10 lakh crore asset-monetisation pipeline and Rs. 1.5 lakh crore in long-term loans to states.


Trade ambitions were revived through an Export Promotion Mission and the BharatTradeNet platform, with an eye on lifting merchandise exports towards 300 billion dollars by 2030. The budget also gestured at GST rationalisation, expanded PM-KISAN and the Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana for 80 crore beneficiaries, and offered forward guidance on capex.


Deregulation has moved from rhetoric to statute. The Jan Vishwas Act of 2023 decriminalised 183 business-related provisions, replacing punishment with remediation; a second instalment promises to extend this logic to more than 100 additional laws. PAN 2.0 has made tax identification instant and paperless, nudging fintech adoption and formalisation among small firms. States, prodded by the Business Reform Action Plan, have begun linking regulatory reform to industrial expansion.


Familiar Obstacles

That said, labour-law rationalisation and land reform remain hostage to state-level resistance. Environmental clearances are quicker on paper than in practice. Banks, despite the Reserve Bank of India’s easing, still chafe under layered compliance. A high-level committee on regulatory reform is expected to report by early 2026, while a proposed Investment Friendliness Index aims to shame laggard states into action. Risk-based compliance could yet invigorate MSMEs and startups, but tariff simplification (now compressed into eight slabs) must still resolve duty inversions that penalise domestic value addition.


Nowhere is strategic vulnerability clearer than in rare-earth permanent magnets. Imports exceeded 90 percent of demand, a dependence that became painfully visible in April 2025 when China imposed export controls. Electric vehicles, renewable-energy firms and defence manufacturers faced cost increases of 15 to 20 percent and sharply longer lead times. India imported around 53,000 tonnes of magnets in FY25; demand is expected to double by 2030. The government has responded with a Rs. 16,300 crore National Critical Mineral Mission and a Rs. 7,280–7,350 crore incentive scheme to build an integrated domestic magnet ecosystem with 6,000 tonnes per annum of capacity. Overseas acquisitions and mineral auctions add ballast. While dependence on China may fall to 60–70 percent by 2030, near self-sufficiency is unlikely before 2035.


Finance, by contrast, has been a rare source of cheer. Gross non-performing assets fell to a 12-year low of 2.2 percent, or about Rs. 1.5 lakh crore on a credit base of Rs. 181 lakh crore. Public-sector banks improved to 2.5 percent; private lenders held at 1.8 percent. Credit growth moderated to 10.2 percent by mid-2025 as firms tapped capital markets, while retail and MSME lending held steady. The IPO market was exuberant: 373 listings raised Rs. 1.95 lakh crore, making India the world’s busiest bourse for new issues. Domestic investors displaced foreigners, cushioning outflows without dulling market confidence.


Monetary policy helped as the RBI cut rates by 125 basis points in 2025, shifting decisively from inflation control to growth support. Liquidity swung into surplus; inflation drifted towards the 3–4 percent comfort zone.


As the year unfolds, the question is less whether India has momentum than whether it can sustain reform through execution. Self-reliance demands institutional persistence and political patience. Deregulation offers the clearest path to faster growth. The destination is enticing. The journey remains unfinished.


(The author is a Chartered Accountant with a leading company in Mumbai. Views personal.)


Comments

bottom of page