Govt to set up sports school in each district of the country

Sports training will now be available in every district of India. The govt plans to set up sports schools to provide specialized sports training along with normal education in all 640 districts of the country. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 9, 2013, 19:56:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Sports training will now be available in every district of India.

The government plans to set up sports schools to provide specialized sports training along with normal education in all 640 districts of the country to prepare a pool of sportsperson to enhance India's performance in international sporting events.

The ministry of sports and youth affairs has outlined an ambitious inter-ministerial programme to set up district level sports schools, in which young sporting talent from the area would be admitted.

The talent would be hunted by talent scouts to be appointed under ongoing ministry scheme Panchayat Yuva Krida Aur Khel Abhiyan, in which the government provides money to developing a sports field in every panchayat of the country. In every district, around 100 children would be identified for free of cost education and sports training in these schools.

But, the government will not be able to implement the project with support of the corporate sector except in backward and naxal affected districts.

The ministry has proposed to open up these schools in Public Private Partnership mode and is willing to allocate around Rs 32 crore for building these schools. Around 60 % of the allotted money would be used to build good quality sporting facilities in schools for 10 Olympic Sports, in which India has a chance to win medals.

In around 272 districts, which are either backward or naxal affected, the ministry plans to provide 75 % of the total cost for building these schools. The remaining money would have to be provided by the state governments. The ministry believes that the funding in these districts can be done through Integrated Action Plan (IAP) and through special programmes for north-east, Jammu and Kashmir and Backward Regions Grant Fund.

A ministry's proposal says that these schools would be set up on pattern of Central or Navodaya Schools for educational curriculum and sports training would be provided by experts from Sports Authority of India (SAI) including a bio-medic for each school.
The students who excel in sports would be eligible for admission at the next level - Centres of Excellence. The ministry plans to set up 25 such centres across India by upgrading SAI's 12 existing sporting facilities and developing 13 new ones.

Along with these students, "elite athletes" would also be trained at these international quality centers. "The juniors in company of seniors will hone their skills in a way not available to them in past," the ministry's proposal said.

The ministry also wants to appoint a coach for 10 sportsperson in these centers and also provide them regular international exposure. Best athletes from these centers will participate in national and international events and would become a pool to qualify for 2020 Olympics.

To encourage children to take up sports, the ministry wants the police, para-military and Army to assure a government job to every senior secondary pass-out of the district level sports school. Those admitted in centers of excellence should get a higher grade government job, the ministry in its proposal to be implemented from 12th five year plan has said.

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