Central aid to tap sporting talent on cards

Talented young sports persons would now get government assistance to hone their skills to compete in international events including Olympics and win laurels,Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 15, 2013, 01:17:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Talented young sports persons would now get government assistance to hone their skills to compete in international events including Olympics and win laurels.

The first fillip to the directive came from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Monday, which asked the sports ministry to launch talent hunt to scout for young sportsperson who can be trained to eventually increase India’s medal tally by 2020.

The principal secretary to the PM, Pulak Chatterjee, reportedly told sports ministry officials to execute a plan in specific time-frame to spot the talent at ground level and provide national and international exposure to them. This is in line with a blue-print prepared by the PMO to make India a recognisable force in sports.

The PMO has also asked the sports ministry to hold competitions at district, state and national levels to pick the talented and ensure that they get financial aid from the government in form of a scholarship or free education plus sports training.

The ministry has initiated a plan to admit the talented young sports persons to specialised sports training schools under the Panchayat Yuva Krida Aur Khel Abhiyan in all 640 districts of the country.

The government plans to fund 75% of the total cost for constructing school buildings in 272 backward and naxal-affected districts. The remaining part of the funds should be provided by the state governments.

In other areas, the ministry wants to build schools in partnership with private players such as Mittal Foundation.

The government also plans to upgrade 24 centres of Sports Authority of India (SAI) into centres of excellence to provide specialised training.

“We have prepared a work plan to make sports integral part of school curriculum and a career option,” a senior official said, adding paramilitary forces and army will be asked to hire sports persons as a policy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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