Govt assistance coming to tap young sporting talent

PMO asks Sports Ministry to scout such talent across India and give them best possible training.

Updated on: Jan 14, 2013, 21:09:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Talented young sports person would now get government assistance to horn their skills to compete in the international events including Olympics and win laurels for the country.

The first fillip in this direction came from the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday which asked the Sports Ministry to launch talent hunt across India to scout for young sportsperson who can be trained to eventually increase India’s medal tally by 2020.

Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pulak Chatterjee reportedly told sports ministry officials to execute a plan in specific time-frames to spot the talent at ground level and provide them 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 spot talent and ensure that those selected gets financial
assistance from the government in form of a scholarship or free education plus sports training.

The Sports ministry has initiated a plan to admit the talented young sportsperson identified by talent scouts under Panchayat Yuva Krida Aur Khel Abhiyan in specialized sports training schools with Kendriya Vidalaya level normal education in each of the 640 districts in the country.

In around 272 districts backward and naxal affected districts the government plans to provide 75 % of the total cost for building these schools. The remaining money would have to be provided by the state governments. In other areas, the ministry wants to start the schools in partnership with private players in the area of promoting sports such as Mittal Foundation.

Apart from the schools, the government also wants to upgrade 24 centers of Sports Authority of India into centers of excellence to provide specialized training to them.

“We have already prepared a work plan to make sports integral part school curriculum and a career option,” a senior government official said, adding that paramilitary forces and Army would be asked to hire sportsperson as a policy.

The plan is being executed with an eye on 2016 Rio Olympics but the officials believe that its real dividends would be visible by 2020 Olympics.

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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