Where did Rs 702.86 crore go: Inside India’s Asian Games

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. This money speaks volumes about how the country is trying to build a competitive sports system.

The sports ministry says Rs 702.86 crore has been spent on its annual training and competition calendar, or ACTC, during the preparatory period. The expenses covered everything from sending athletes to international competitions and running domestic training camps to buying equipment and hiring foreign experts. Another Rs 97.84 crore was spent through the Target Olympic Podium Scheme, or TOPS, taking the reported expenditure under the two schemes to around Rs 800.7 crore.

The biggest investment was in getting athletes to compete at the international level. 251.4 million rupees, roughly 36 percent of ACTC’s expenditure, went to international competition. That tells the story in itself. Rather than treating the Asian Games as a competition for which athletes prepare in isolation, the government has invested heavily in putting them on the international circuit before they arrive in Japan.

BUYING EXPERIENCE

For athletes, international exposure is more than just a line on a travel bill. It means competing against stronger opponents, learning to deal with unfamiliar conditions, and understanding what it takes to perform when the difference between winning and losing is small.

Therefore, the size of the allocation matters. India spent more than twice as much on international competition exposure as on domestic training, which fetched Rs 118.3 crore.

The two together account for Rs 369.7 million, more than half of ACTC’s expenditure. The message is fairly clear: preparation is built around athletes training consistently at home, but also having enough international competition to know how they stack up before the big event.

FOR ATHLETES

Spending also shows an effort to build support system around athletes. Rs 86.3 crore went to foreign experts, with the ministry saying 50 experts were hired. Another Rs 117.9 million was classified as ‘other expenditure’ which covers remuneration of Indian experts, hosting of national championships and international competitions in India and development of coaches.

Together these two heads represent more than Rs 200 crore. But it also belongs to the areas where the characters in the subtitles tell only part of the story. The ministry’s presentation does not indicate the further distribution of Rs 117.9 million or details of individual engagements with foreign experts.

This makes spending less about simply calculating how much has been spent and more about understanding what kind of sports infrastructure India is trying to build around its athletes.

Equipment is another part of this 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 spent more than six times more on international competitive exposure than on training abroad.

A LONGER BET

Money is also spent with a longer horizon in mind.

The current contingent is young and sources familiar with the ministry’s thinking say the goal is not just to win the maximum possible medal at the 2026 Asian Games. The emphasis is on a rigorous and fair selection process and building a pool of athletes who can remain competitive for years, with 2032 and beyond forming part of a longer-term plan.

The clearest evidence of this strategy is the presence of 65 Khelo India athletes in the 501-strong contingent. Khelo India is described by the ministry as a grassroots sports system, and the movement of these athletes to 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 started to assert themselves. 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 who bring expectations to the Games.

The point, according to sources, is not to sacrifice the present for the future. The aim now is to give the junior athletes a high level of exposure so that they can become established names that India relies on in the next Olympic cycle and beyond.

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 all-time best haul at the Asian Games. The current contingent has 501 athletes in 36 disciplines, with athletics being the largest sport-specific contingent with 78 athletes.

The ministry believes the momentum is good enough to give India a chance to equal or better this record. But the officials also emphasized that the preparation can only take the athletes for now. Medals must ultimately be won in competition.

Therefore, the expenditure on the support system is considerable. The 265-strong support staff includes doctors, physiotherapists and mental health specialists, with one-third of eligible support staff coming from sports science, according to the ministry. Each team also has a female support staff.

The goal is to remove as many avoidable gaps around the athlete as possible. Training, competition exposure, equipment, coaching and sports science support are part of the same effort.

WHAT MONEY MEAN

Taken together, ACTC’s Rs 702.86 crore expenditure and an additional Rs 97.84 crore through TOPS is less a single bill on the Asian Games than an investment across the sporting calendar.

The biggest bet was on competition experience. Considerable sums were spent on training, equipment and expertise. And more and more, the system is trying to bring younger athletes into that environment earlier.

The immediate return will be measured in medals in Aichi-Nagoya. A longer return will take significantly more time.

If the 65 athletes from Khelo India and the younger members of the contingent become the core of Indian teams in future Asian Games and Olympics, the outlay will achieve something bigger than another record medal haul.

For the ministry, it’s a bigger calculation: not just how many medals India can win in 2026, but whether the money spent now can help build athletes for the future.

– The end

Issued by:

Amar Panicker

Published on:

16 Sep 2026 09:23 IST