Marian Fitzwalter writes in.
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india may not have worked out for the ioc, but sport has worked out for india. india will probably not win much more than a medal or two in the olympic games, but organized sport in india has not been about the medals any way. organizations and institutions involved in sport in india have viewed the role of sport much more broadly. sport has been viewed not only as a means of promoting health, fitness, &c., but also as a way of working the cultural framework of the subcontinent.
the hold of weberian traditional authority in a country such as india cannot be easily discounted. war has been part of many of the traditions. the idea of sport as a means for peace has been pursued inside the indian political structure - if the constantly warring nation states in greece could be persuaded to project their superiority by means of sport, so perhaps could the different cultures of india. sport may thus substitute for the role that war has traditionally played in many of these cultures (imagine the shiites and the sunnis in iraq taking out their mutual antagonism in a game of rugby or soccer instead of what they are upto right now). let's pit "our" best against "their" best, and let us see who wins.
it takes off from the idea of the Olympic truce. the olympics in greece were a means by which the Greek nation-states dropped their mutual antagonism for a period of time - "wars were suspended, armies were prohibited from entering Elis or threatening the Games, and legal disputes and the carrying out of death penalties were forbidden". when the different cultures duke it out on a sports field - where it is all about points on a chart and the fight is merely symbolic - as opposed to a battlefield, then the worst aspects of war - killing, maiming, genocide - may be avoided. so far, sport has worked quite well for india.