India’s preparation for the Asian Games has become a sizeable government investment, but the more interesting story is not the Rs 702.86 crore headline. It is what that money says about how the country is trying to build a competitive sporting system.
The Sports Ministry says Rs 702.86 crore has been spent on its Annual Calendar for Training and Competition, or ACTC, during the preparation period. The spending has covered everything from sending athletes to international competitions and running domestic training camps to buying equipment and hiring foreign experts. A further Rs 97.84 crore has been spent through the Target Olympic Podium Scheme, or TOPS, taking the reported spending under the two programmes to about Rs 800.7 crore.
The largest investment has been in getting athletes to compete internationally. Rs 251.4 crore, roughly 36 per cent of the ACTC expenditure, has gone towards international competition exposure. That tells a story in itself. Rather than treating the Asian Games as a competition that athletes prepare for in isolation, the government has spent heavily on putting them on the international circuit before they arrive in Japan.
BUYING EXPERIENCE
For an athlete, international exposure is more than a line on a travel bill. It means competing against stronger opponents, learning to deal with unfamiliar conditions and understanding what is required to perform when the margin between winning and losing is tiny.
That is why the size of the allocation matters. India has spent more than twice as much on international competition exposure as it has on domestic training, which received Rs 118.3 crore.
The two together account for Rs 369.7 crore, more than half of the ACTC expenditure. The message is fairly clear: the preparation is built around athletes training consistently at home but also getting enough international competition to know where they stand before the big event.
BEYOND THE ATHLETE
The spending also shows an effort to build the support system around athletes. Rs 86.3 crore has gone towards foreign experts, with the Ministry saying 50 experts were hired. Another Rs 117.9 crore has been classified as “other expenses”, covering remuneration of Indian experts, hosting national championships and international competitions in India, and coaches’ development.
Together, those two heads account for more than Rs 200 crore. But they are also among the areas where the headline figures tell only part of the story. The Ministry’s presentation does not provide a further breakup of the Rs 117.9 crore or details of the individual foreign-expert contracts.
That makes the spending less about a simple calculation of how much was spent and more about understanding what kind of sporting infrastructure India is trying to create around its athletes.
Equipment is another part of that effort, with Rs 89.2 crore spent on equipment support. Overseas training, meanwhile, accounted for Rs 39.8 crore. The contrast is striking: the government has spent more than six times as much on international competition exposure as on training abroad.
A LONGER BET
The money is also being spent with a longer horizon in mind.
The current contingent is young, and sources familiar with the Ministry’s thinking say the objective is not simply to chase the maximum possible medal tally at the 2026 Asian Games. The emphasis is on a strict and fair selection process and on building a group of athletes who can remain competitive for years, with 2032 and beyond forming part of the longer-term plan.
The clearest evidence of that strategy is the presence of 65 Khelo India athletes in the 501-member contingent. Khelo India is described by the Ministry as the baseline sports system, and the movement of these athletes into the senior national team offers a measure of whether the government’s investment is creating a pathway from the grassroots to elite competition.
The contingent also includes a number of young athletes who have already begun making their mark. Fifteen-year-old cricketer Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is the youngest member, while squash player Anahat Singh, badminton player Ayush Shetty and judoka Asmita Dey are among the younger athletes carrying expectations into the Games.
The idea, according to sources, is not to sacrifice the present for the future. It is to give younger athletes high-level exposure now so that they can become the established names India relies on in the next Olympic cycle and beyond.
THE HANGZHOU BENCHMARK
There is still an immediate benchmark to meet.
India returned from Hangzhou with 106 medals, including 28 gold, 38 silver and 40 bronze, its best-ever Asian Games haul. The current contingent has 501 athletes across 36 disciplines, with athletics the largest sport-specific contingent at 78 athletes.
The Ministry believes the momentum is good enough to give India a chance of matching or improving that record. But officials have also stressed that preparation can only take athletes so far. Ultimately, the medals have to be won in competition.
That is why the spending on the support system is significant. The 265-member support staff includes doctors, physiotherapists and mental health specialists, with the Ministry saying one-third of the authorised support staff comes from sports sciences. Every team also has women’s support staff.
The aim is to remove as many of the avoidable gaps around an athlete as possible. Training, competition exposure, equipment, coaching and sports science support are all pieces of the same effort.
WHAT THE MONEY MEANS
Seen together, the Rs 702.86 crore ACTC expenditure and the additional Rs 97.84 crore through TOPS are less a single Asian Games bill than an investment across the sporting calendar.
The largest bet has been on competition experience. Significant amounts have gone into training, equipment and specialist expertise. And increasingly, the system is trying to bring younger athletes into that environment earlier.
The immediate return will be measured in medals in Aichi-Nagoya. The longer return will take considerably more time.
If the 65 Khelo India athletes and the younger members of the contingent become the core of India’s teams at future Asian Games and Olympics, the spending will have achieved something larger than another record medal haul.
For the Ministry, that is the bigger calculation: not just how many medals India can win in 2026, but whether the money being spent now can help build the athletes for the future.
– Ends
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