Indian sport is battling to shake off its reputation for being one of the world’s worst doping offenders as the country pushes an ambitious bid to host the 2036 Olympics.The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has raised concerns about the number of Indian competitors taking performance-enhancing drugs and so too has the country’s best-known athlete.The 2021 Olympic javelin champion Neeraj Chopra made a blunt admission earlier this year.”Doping is a big problem in India among our athletes,” he told local media, saying they instead should “eat well, rest well and work hard”.The Indian Olympic Association (IOA) last month formed a new anti-doping panel after the IOC flagged India’s poor record.The government has passed a new national anti-doping bill aiming to tighten enforcement, expand testing facilities and “ensure the highest standards of integrity” in sports.”Obviously the IOC would want to make sure that in awarding the Games to a country, the host has a robust doping policy and governance,” Michael Payne, former IOC marketing director, told AFP.The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) lists India among the worst offenders among nations submitting more than 1,000 samples.India’s national anti-doping agency, NADA, insists the figures reflect more aggressive testing in the nation of 1.4 billion people.From 5,606 samples collected in 2023, 213 came back positive.The synthetic steroid stanozolol is the most widely used banned substance taken by Indian athletes, experts say.                                      – Careers at stake -Despite its vast population India has won only 10 Olympic golds in its history. Experts say desperation to add to that and escape poverty is one reason why some Indian athletes are prepared to risk doping.Success in sports can be a ticket to coveted government jobs, often with the police or armed forces.That provides life-long financial security after their sporting careers end.”Athletes know that they can be punished but still put their careers at stake,” lawyer Saurabh Mishra, who has defended athletes in doping scandals, said.”(They know that) getting a medal will help them clinch a government job.”Athletics leads India’s doping violations, followed by wrestling, where 19 athletes were recently banned.In July under-23 wrestling champion and Paris Olympics quarter-finalist Reetika Hooda tested positive and was provisionally suspended.Mishra said some athletes are victims of ignorance, consuming banned substances through supplements or medicines, but others take risks knowingly.Sometimes they are encouraged by their coaches to dope.Sports medicine expert Saranjeet Singh, who has written extensively on doping in India, said a recent surge in violations was only partly due to stricter testing.”They cannot achieve the level of performance that they want at international level and use banned drugs for a short cut,” Singh told AFP.- Bigger hurdles -India now faces a race to prove its credibility, as it competes with the likes of Indonesia, Turkey, Chile and Qatar for the 2036 Games.The former IOC marketing director Payne noted that many past Olympic hosts had chequered doping histories.While doping is an issue, India’s greater obstacle to staging an Olympics lies elsewhere, he said.”The bigger issue is confidence in the overall operational delivery capabilities of the host, and there India has a lot of work to do,” Payne said.He was referring to the corruption-riddled 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, memories of which still linger. “That is the biggest hurdle facing India’s bid,” Payne said.

The fields are full but the paddy brown and wilted, and the air thick with the stench of rotting crops and livestock — the aftermath of record monsoon rains that have devastated India’s breadbasket.In Punjab, often dubbed the country’s granary, the damage is unprecedented: floods have swallowed farmlands almost the size of London and New York City combined.India’s agriculture minister said in a recent visit to the state that “the crops have been destroyed and ruined”, and Punjab’s chief minister called the deluge “one of the worst flood disasters in decades”.Old-timers agree.”The last time we saw such an all-consuming flood was in 1988,” said 70-year-old Balkar Singh in the village of Shehzada, 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of the holy Sikh city of Amritsar.The gushing waters have reduced Singh’s paddy field to marshland and opened ominous cracks in the walls of his house. Floods and landslides are common during the June-September monsoon season on the subcontinent, but experts say climate change, coupled with poorly planned development, is increasing their frequency, severity and impact.Punjab saw rainfall surge by almost two-thirds compared with the average rate for August, according to the national weather department, killing at least 52 people and affecting over 400,000.Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a relief package worth around $180 million for Punjab.- ’10 feet high’ -The village of Toor, sandwiched between the Ravi river and Pakistan, is in tatters — strewn with collapsing crops, livestock carcasses and destroyed homes.”The water came past midnight on August 26,” said farm worker Surjan Lal. “It rose up to at least 10 feet (three metres) in a matter of minutes.”Lal said the village in Punjab’s worst-affected Gurdaspur district was marooned for nearly a week. “We were all on rooftops,” he said. “We could do nothing as the water carried away everything from our animals and beds.”In adjacent Lassia, the last Indian village before the frontier, farmer Rakesh Kumar counted his losses. “In addition to the land I own, I had taken some more on lease this year,” said the 37-year-old. “All my investment has just gone down the drain.”To make things worse, Kumar said, the future looked bleak.He said he feared his fields would not be ready in time to sow wheat, the winter crop of choice in Punjab.”All the muck has to first dry up and only then can the big machines clear up the silt,” he said.Even at the best of times, bringing heavy earth-movers into the area is a tall order, as a pontoon bridge connecting it to the mainland only operates in the lean months.For landless labourers like 50-year-old Mandeep Kaur, the uncertainty is even greater. “We used to earn a living by working in the big landlords’ fields but now they are all gone,” said Kaur.Her house was washed away by the water, forcing her to sleep in the courtyard under a tarpaulin sheet — an arrangement fraught with danger as snakes slither all over the damp land.- Basmati blues -Punjab is the largest supplier of rice and wheat to India’s food security programme, which provides subsidised grain to more than 800 million people.Analysts say this year’s losses are unlikely to threaten domestic supplies thanks to large buffer stocks, but exports of premium basmati rice are expected to suffer.”The main effect will be on basmati rice production, prices and exports because of lower output in Indian and Pakistan Punjab,” said Avinash Kishore of the International Food Policy Research Institute in New Delhi.Punishing US tariffs have already made Indian basmati less competitive, and the floods risk worsening that squeeze.The road to recovery for Punjab’s embattled farmers, analysts say, will be particularly steep because the state opted out of the federal government’s insurance scheme, citing high costs and a low-risk profile because of its robust irrigation network.Singh, the septuagenarian farmer, said the water on his farm was “still knee-deep”.”I don’t know what the future holds for us,” he said.