Govt adopts marks-for-sports plan

A proposal to give marks to students for achieving certain level of physical fitness and setting up two sports institutes to improve India's Olympic medal tally got a stamp of approval from the Cabinet today, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 5, 2012, 24:04:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A proposal to give marks to students for achieving certain level of physical fitness and setting up two sports institutes to improve India's Olympic medal tally got a stamp of approval from the Cabinet on Thursday.

The proposal was announced by sports minister Ajay Maken's at the launch of Hindustan Times book on August 9.

Maken had unveiled the National Physical Fitness Programme providing additional weightage in academic performance to more physically fit students from class V onwards.

The students will be graded periodically with stars based on their physical fitness level.

"The scheme needs to be motivational rather than being coercive and to obtain this, the achievement of fitness by a child has to be rewarded in a manner similar to a reward for academic achievements," Maken had said, while releasing the exposure draft of the programme on August 31.

Fitness evaluation will have six components --- cardio-respiratory endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, explosive strength (jumping) and body composition (percentage of body fat).

Fitness tests will be executed twice a year - in June and January - which will provide an idea of the status as well as level of improvement of the student's fitness during an academic session.

The programme is aimed at improve health of citizens as a recent World Health Organisation report said that one out of three Indians would be either a coronary patient or diabetic by 2030.

The ministry also wanted to set up National Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicines at a cost of Rs. 500 and National Institute of Sports Coaching to provide cutting edge support to medal hopefuls as part of its Olympics 2020 plan.

The three proposals of the ministry were part of the Planning Commission's 12th five-year plan (2012-17), whose draft was approved by the Cabinet.

The plan will now be considered by the National Development Council --- a body of all chief ministers and crucial Central ministers - probably in November.

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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