“Montiel….Argentina, Champions of the World, Again. At last. And the Nation will Tango all night long. 36 years ago since Maradona and Mexico, here finally is a nation's new throng of immortals. Scaloni will be fated, Messi will be sainted.” the words by the golden-tongued poetic wizard Peter Drury were echoed in the ears of the billions of football fans and the whole world finally had a breath to catch after witnessing such an enthralling and nerve-wracking thriller of a Finale.
Much to my surprise, I had never seen so much enthusiasm, arguments, and discussions-debates over a football match in the Indian community. It felt like all of a sudden Football peaked in the nation at that moment. But is it the start of Indians exploring more of the sport or was it just another moment of being affected by the occasional global ongoings?
Just a day ago our Indian Football team skipper and Legend Sunil Chettri posted a video on his social media handle urging fans to come to stadiums to watch them play during the ongoing Indian Super League. All of this happens just after the end of FIFA World Cup. Were we all not in love with football a few days ago or were we just influenced by the global trend for the sake of entertainment?
But my article doesn’t focus on the rise of football in general but rather on a bigger root problem
“ Why hasn’t India been able to grow in other global sports and produce enough sports person in every sporting event despite being so heavily populated?”
India, a nation with a population touching almost 140 crores is proud of its rich history and heritage and has seen growth in various sectors since its independence but one field which has not seen the expected growth is the Sports sector.
Every passing Olympics, we hope to get a few medals across selected sporting events. And on top of that, we are unaware of half of the athletes representing us on the grand stage and discover them only during the course of the competition due to their courage and sporting brilliance. Our incapability to have athletes in every major sport has very definite and diverse reasons for it. Our lack of awareness towards sports, the unavailability of facilities and infrastructure for sports development, the mindset of parents towards sports as a career, the lack of exposure and platform, and the politics surrounding sports have all contributed to the stagnant growth of sports in the nation.
Barring Cricket which has consistently evolved from the historic event of ’83 so much so that it has garnered a special place in the heart of every Indian. Other sports have failed to procure the level of attention that Cricket has achieved in our nation. Hockey which was predominant during the early stages of Indian Independence has since had a slight downfall, not in terms of quality but instead is saturated in terms of producing national-level players to a specific part of India i.e. Northern states. Football has a higher influence in the North-Eastern states and has scattered popularity in states of the Southern region. On the individual level, Wrestlers are produced from Haryana and rarely from the state of Maharashtra.
All of these statements lead to the conclusion that we have these hotspots for every particular sport but have failed to transpire them to parts of the nation to every tip of the plateau. We have also failed to build proper training complexes at these hotspots for the peak development of the athletes.
We see that measures have been taken to address these problems in the past few years. The ‘Khelo India’ campaign, is a national-level program for the development of sports to revive the sports culture in India at the root level. Initiated by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports was inaugurated in 2018 by our Hon Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The campaign is very direct and determined with its objective i.e. to identify and develop the athletes in various sports across the nation. The ‘Khelo India Youth Games’ formerly known as ‘Khelo India School Games’ is one of the most popular and crucial events under the ‘Khelo India’ campaign as its motto is to inspire young talented teenagers and provide them a platform to demonstrate their true potential so that India can realize its dream of becoming a sports superpower.
The first event of the ‘Khelo India Youth Games’ was held in New Delhi in 2018. The inaugural event saw the enthusiastic participation of athletes from all over the nation and the delightful coordination of all the responsible authorities made the event a huge success. This inspired the further introduction of events like ‘Khelo India University Games’ and ‘Khelo India Winter Games’ which also saw active participation from the athletes. The three seasons of the Khelo India Youth Games have seen a tremendous boost in terms of participation of athletes, diversity in the locality of participants, popularity, and understanding of the motto of the campaign year after year. The best part of this campaign is that they have developed a scouting system in this campaign where potential talents are identified and are trained with modernized training complexes which are specially built to nurture them and get the best out of their potential for them to compete in global competitions like Olympics, Commonwealth Games and other topmost competitions of the respective sport.
We are starting to see the early results of the campaign and they are truly impressive. There are some prime examples to prove its effectiveness. The latest sensation from the Commonwealth Games 2022, Jeremy Lalrinnunga, the 20-year-old Weightlifter from Mizoram rose from the institution of the Khelo India campaign and is one of the most promising prospects. He made the whole of the nation proud by winning the Gold Medal at such a young age. Other imminent examples are Manu Bhaker (Shooting), Anshu Malik (Wrestling), Swadesh Mondal (Swimming), etc and there are so many other athletes who with their hard work and skillset along with the provisions provided by the Khelo India campaign have been slowly climbing the steps to the long-awaited dream.
I want to shed light upon a very important problem area which has hindered the rate of this sports revolution, the sporting culture in the nation i.e. “The unorthodox mindset towards sports as a career”. We see that in our country sports is seen as an extra-curricular activity rather than a career, which has cost us over the years and this mindset need to change asap. The parents especially are not conveyed by the fact that sports can be taken up as a career and consider it as a time waster. They also bound conditions upon their child in order for them to enjoy their favorite sports. They consider academic education as the top priority even though their pupil has the potential to excel in a particular sport. Their unorthodox mindset is not the only reason but several other external factors like unavailability of grounds, courts and other facilities, the politics surrounding the sport also reduce the chances of one true sportsperson becoming a big success in the future The lack of opportunity in rural or suburban areas has also prevented from the emergence of athletes from that particular area. The school and colleges are also not fully interested in developing sports in their campus and also lack the proper sports infrastructure. All these are also a hurdle to tackle before becoming a proper sporting nation and hence a superpower.
We do have a lot of raw and unpolished talent in our country who with the help of the higher authorities of campaigns such as these can do wonders on the global stage. I just hope that we find a solution t overcome these barriers and progress towards the united dream of making our nation truly a great sporting nation and a sports superpower.