India needs to re-draw sports promotion plans and stamp out doping if they hope to become a serious medal contender at major championships, according to sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar.
India's success at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne showed there is a dire need for a revamp.
"There is something skewed about our achievement," he said. "Three-quarters of the medals are from a single discipline, shooting."
"The way in which the whole social sector is skewed in favour of the urban elite, that is responsible for our poor performance."
India won 22 gold medals in a 50-medal tally spread across seven of the 10 disciplines they entered to finish fourth in the overall medals table.
Sixteen of the gold medals came in shooting; three others were won by their weightlifters.
"We need to look at the entire strategy of building up an adequate number of disciplines to be able to match our performance to our size and population," he said.
Billion-strong India has been dubbed a "one-medal nation" after managing a solitary medal each in the last three Olympics.
However, with the Indian economy booming, sports officials want to stage major events to rival their neighbour China, who will stage the 2008 Olympics.
New Delhi is the venue for the 2010 Commonwealth Games and is in the race for the 2014 Asian Games and the 2016 Olympics.
GARGANTUAN SUMS
Aiyar criticised millions of dollars being poured to raise infrastructure for the 2010 Games.
"It is a very odd system of priorities that spending gargantuan sums of money on stadia in the capital constitute a contribution to sports while the whole of our countryside remains neglected."
"Younger India constitutes the world's largest resource of youth power; 400 million young boys and girls.
"The net has been spread so narrow that we have only 10,000 talented sportsmen trained by the Sports Authority of India (SAI)," he said, referring to the government body.
"So long as it is the Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games that inspires us rather than a genuine empathy with the vast number of Indian boys and girls, you will just never get any kind of exposure to any kind of sport."
Aiyar said he planned to initiate a programme to tap talent in rural areas and from urban slums.
He said stringent steps would be taken to root out doping in Indian sports.
"As the government, I would say it is essential to stamp out doping altogether," he said.
Indian lifters were involved in doping scandals at the 2004 Athens Olympics and in Melbourne, where two male lifters tested positive for anabolic steroid Stanozolol.
A doping laboratory in Delhi was close to being accredited by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which would add teeth to steps being taken against drug cheats, he said.
"It's a question of ensuring we have adequate testing facilities and are being very disciplinarian."
