system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is India so bad at Olympic sport?
gpt
Mostly due to infrastructure. 

In India sports has a relatively low level of investment, public interest, social involvement besides cricket and to a lesser extent field hockey, volleyball and badminton.
 

Most high level sports people train from a young age through several layers of clubs/teams with coaching and leagues of various levels. It is a big machine of development and talent discovery/grooming.


In India this is not the case for many sports.

Grassroots training, nurturing talent and structural competitive systems are very rare outside of cricket or wealthy individuals.

There is some social stigma against professional sportsmen outside of the larger sports. Generally it is not government priority, it can be rare to get proper funding and therefore in the family structure of Indian life, sports can be seen as wasting time/ fun for children. 

TL;DR: lack of financial investment in structure. Lack of financial incentive. Social stigma. Lack of facility access - high level of poorer people have little access to sports facilities. Lack of participation.