Abhinav Bindra won the first ever individual Olympic gold. Oh yes, I missed to suffix the self aggrandizing “for India”, especially, after the magnanimous chest thumping by all and sundry from the Indian sports establishment and plentiful rewards by state governments by dime a dozen. That Abhinav would probably never travel in a train what with a 200 Cr (INR 2 billion) Hotel gift from his dad has no relevance for Lalu who declared a lifetime free pass to him on Indian Railways, and neither does the fact that there could be a lot of sporting talent in the villages of North Bihar which, unfortunately gets used up in ensuring daily survival amidst perennial floods and dilapidated infrastructure.

Union Sports Minister MS Gill grandly congratulated himself and every Indian. Nice thoughts sir. Now, can we also talk about weight lifter Monika Devi who was stopped from boarding the flight to Beijing just hours before citing a failed drug test after which she was cleared. All through the day the athlete kept insisting on TV channels that it was some foul play by some IOA officials who did not want her to go. She was duly cleared of the dope charges but the bus, or rather, the plane had already left. Even if there was no foul play, it does throw a fair amount of light on the state of affairs in Indian sports establishment. Even if it was a mistake, it was one which ruined an athlete’s sporting career – even if it was inadvertent, the accountability should be fixed and the guilty be brought to book. Accountability, now did it not vanish long back along with the dodo?

Abhinav has done all of us proud. The nation of a billion finally got an Olympic gold, individual. It’s a moment of glory which needs to be savored. But the kind of self-congratulation we saw two days back – it is kind of obscene.

In some sense, Abhinav’s success is a lot like the successes of other Indians in several other fields. In almost all the cases, it is the individual who wins, not because of the system but despite it. Be it sports, be it technology, or even education, only those Indians succeed who can fight it through the system. In that sense, every Indian victory is actually an individual victory.

However, it’s not all dark and gloomy. These individual victories will give us the faith that we can win and also the momentum to all ambitious Indians striving out in their chosen fields. Someday, when we have had a critical mass of individual victories, may be, we will set out setting up a system which actively assists the pursuit of victory and not just goes berserk in self-glory whenever some isolated strong willed person imbued with immense talent and loaded with tremendous grit carves out a rare triumph through his own sweat and blood.

Congratulations Abhinav. You did all of us proud.