Examine how incentive-based sports policies can create unintended ethical hazards, using the case of India's doping crisis ahead of major multi-sport events.

Cash awards, job quotas and medal-linked bonuses are designed to make elite sport a viable career. But when the reward for the outcome outgrows the institutional policing of the process, incentives invert into ethical hazard — India's doping record before the 2026 Games illustrates this sharply.

How incentives generate the hazard

• Outcome-weighted rewards: the Ministry's Special Awards Scheme pays medal winners substantial cash, and extends 50% of that award to coaches [1] — making the coach a co-stakeholder in the medal rather than in clean preparation.
• Distorted cost-benefit before high-stakes windows: at least 13 doping positives surfaced across athletics, weightlifting, wrestling, wushu and judo ahead of the Commonwealth and Asian Games 2026 [2].
• Weak deterrence side: WADA's Operation Carousel found inadequate testing of registered-pool athletes and poor whereabouts monitoring by NADA [3]; NADA remains seriously understaffed [2]. A high payoff plus low detection probability is a textbook moral-hazard setting.
• Unequal exposure: athletes in less-resourced disciplines, lacking sports-medicine and nutrition support, substitute pharmacological shortcuts for scientific training.

Consequences

• India recorded a 3.6% positivity rate in 2024 (260 adverse findings in 7,113 tests) — the highest among major testing nations [4].
• The Athletics Integrity Unit placed India in "extremely high risk" Category A in April 2026, imposing mandatory out-of-competition testing on national-level athletes [5].
• Clean athletes lose places, athlete health is endangered, and India's soft-power pitch — a 2036 Olympics bid — is weakened.

Reforming the incentive design

• Stagger award disbursal, releasing balances only after sanction-free periods; provide for forfeiture of coach awards on a violation.
• Fully operationalise NADA's statutory powers and testing capacity envisaged under the anti-doping legislative framework [6].
• Reward federations for testing compliance and athlete education, not medal tallies alone.

Incentives are not the problem; unbalanced incentives are. Pairing generous rewards with equally robust testing, education and accountability would align India's medal ambition with the integrity that hosting aspirations demand.