This is not meant to be a direct answer, but it is a sincere response. ( please be kind to me here).
Why do we assume that it is necessary for everyone to prove themselves in competitions other people started? Who cares if my buffalo doesn't run as fast as your horse? My buffalo is very happy as it is and god bless your horse!
I have heard this Olympics question so many times, it has gone beyond irritating me. Is there some rule that every nation must produce people who can run, jump, lift and throw things? Out of decency, and because it helps international relations, India does participate, doesn't it?
The more important question - Is performance in the Olympics some measure of a nation's progress? The erstwhile Soviet Union used to dominate the Olympics once upon a time with so many medals. What has it yielded for its people? Some national pride and stuff like that, but those are all transient. Such an affluent Europe, where people have had great quality of life for so long is suffering because their economic models are not so sound. Nobody is going to ask any of those broken economies why they aren't producing so many Olympic medals!
India has had its own culture of physical sports, but we did not care so much about running in specific tracks, swimming fast, or throwing round balls of iron, or jumping over high obstacles. We had our own sports, and India has not done too badly in sports we care about. At the moment of this writing, India is world champion in cricket, for the 2nd time, while the nation that invented the sport hasn't won it even once.
I really don't understand why performance in the Olympics, or in the few events that are part of it, should be any sort of bar. Usain Bolt is the fastest man on the planet? Great! Now what can we do with one of our boys so he can be beaten? Nothing. I'm bloody okay with that. I love Usain Bolt, and that cocky turning and looking in the rear view mirror as much as anybody else, but I really am okay with not a single Indian kid having the ambition to run like him.
I don't understand why so many people want to climb Mt. Everest either. It is not in my psyche to "conquer" a tall mountain, just because I need a sense of accomplishment. I don't give a rat's bottom about representing humanity by standing at the highest point in the world, after suffering for two years to get there. It's simply not what I would be happy doing.
Nothing personal to prove here, but it isn't a sense of adventure that I'm lacking. I have jumped out of planes (no tandem b.s. ever), and done other crazy things that have fed my adrenaline rush and there are things that thrill me. But I have no need to measure it and know how good I am. I don't need to be the best in some things. I play beach volleyball very competitively, and I am hard to beat in a game of Scrabble, but I don't need to be world champion in any of this.
Now, I am all for excellence, and I'm not for celebrating mediocrity. But if I clock 11.2 seconds over 100 metres and won't qualify for the Olympics, how does it matter? The Greeks started this nonsense, and the whole world, mostly white people, signed on! Suddenly, black people came along, and they've done very well. God bless them all.
The Olympics as the pinnacle of human physical performance - I'm cool with that. But do ALL humans have to be at the pinnacle? What the heck is wrong with a nation of contented people?
I don't need India to ever have to make any bloody excuses for not reaping a medal tally at the Olympics. I don't want anybody in the world to ever feel bad about missing out on something like this. I just want people to be happy, and be able to do things they are interested in and inclined towards. Competition be damned.
Now for those of us who think this sort of thing IS important - the USA produces many world class athletes and they do "bring in" a lot of Olympic medals. Has it stopped the USA from becoming the most obese nation on earth? Has it spawned a culture of healthy living? Absolutely not. This is where the idea of these things as some sort of national goal becomes pretty flimsy to me.
Now let me ask a question that SHOULD bother us - How come India has 16% of the world's population but uses only 4% of the world's energy, while the USA has 4% of the world's population and uses 25% of the world's energy? Let's give India some medals for this! Now, for my favourite alphonso mango lassi....
