My Favourite Challenge: How to make world class sports
facilities accessible to all school children in India?
In the London Olympics of 2012, India was
hailed for its stellar performance. The medal tally was no gold medal, two
silver medals and four bronze medals. In the Rio Olympics of 2016, India won
one silver and one bronze medal. Considering we proudly celebrated these
victories; the questions need to be asked are – “Are we a nation of mediocre
people?” and “Are we content with this mediocrity”? We compare ourselves with
our neighboring country, China. Their medal tally in 2016 Olympics was 26 Gold,
18 Silver and 26 Bronze medals. If we compare ourselves with China, we would
like our achievements also to be in the same league, but we produced two medal
winners out of a 1.2 billion population.
The Indian Olympic association
admits that the country has not done enough to support its athletes. The bulk
of the population in India, which belongs to rural areas don't have access to
nutrition, health and good sports infrastructure. Corruption, favouritism,
apathy and bad management among sports bodies at various levels in India are other
reasons that are turning off young Indian sports persons. There was
misallocation, lack of transparency, poor asset management and an absence of a
framework to measure the impact of public spending.
Education sites are the key providers of sports
facilities in many towns and cities. We can make these school and college sports
facilities available for all children in the town. We can pick one school
or college in town which has good infrastructure or can develop infrastructure
in that place and make it available to all children in the town. Government will
provide funds for all maintenance related work and also pay a fixed rent in
case it is a private school. A set of coaches are appointed in that place for
talent hunt on regular basis.
Many children in small towns want to play sports
everyday as they idolise sportspersons on television. They don’t have proper sports
facilities in their schools. Now they got to know that there is one school with
sports facilities in every town which is open for all children in town.
The school which has the best infrastructure
facilities like Indoor badminton court, Tennis court, Volley ball and Cricket stadium
which can be used for athletics and football is now open to all schools in the
town and nearby villages.
There is one CBSE private english medium school
in our town which has very good sports facilities. And there are 6 other schools
with no sports facilities at all in our town. We take permission from the
school principal of CBSE school or district sports authority and conduct an
open tournament on a weekend which is open to all schools in the town.
The assumptions which can be tested with this experiment are – (a) Students from different schools don’t mind travelling to
the CBSE school and show interest in the sports (b) The CBSE school can
organize these events without any hassles handling those many students from
different schools (c) We can do this in many towns and make more students use
these kind of facilities
The cost of this experiment includes the prizes
we distribute for winners of the tournament, sports equipment like shuttles,
tennis balls and cricket balls required for the tournament. Footballs and
Volleyballs can be borrowed from the school itself. Overall, it costs around five
to six thousand for this experiment.
The success can be measured in terms of number
of students turned up for the tournament. The excitement shown by these
students to play in these facilities is also important. Number of better
players compared to existing CBSE school players is also important in terms of
talent search.
The idea of integrating schools to overcome the infrastructure challenge is a good one. This way students will be able to pursue their interests in sports irrespective of the school's facilities they are studying in.
ReplyDeleteThe challenge is authentic and I also saw similar problem in my town. The solution of community pooling of resources, looks simple and feasible. Lack of sports facilities in rural India is indeed a bottleneck in our quest for better sports performance at an International level. The story board covers pain and solution well. Navodaya schools may be used for this purpose too. Finding decent coaches at that level might have been another assumption that could have been tested.
ReplyDeleteIntuitive idea
The prototype reflects the solution, but the feasibility of it, i.e whether the schools with sports facilities will agree for their facilities and infrastructure to be used by all other schools needs to be checked. The low cost experiment is good as it is checking most of the assumptions made. CBSE schools do this among themselves by forming cluster of schools. Bringing other schools into gamut may be tried.
When Abhinav Bindra won an Olympic medal, everyone commented about how his privileged background gave him access to world class sports facilities. And this is a stark truth in our country, with the low emphasis given to sports, very few people have access to good sports facilities which explains our dismal performance in most tournaments. The solution proposed seems feasible since it will not put a high burden on government spending by sharing of resources however I think there could have been more details about how coaching would be managed. Also, we've seen great wrestlers and boxers come out of villages so finding some local expertise which does not need expensive equipment can also be a good thing to explore
ReplyDeleteNice blog!
ReplyDeleteAre you looking for english medium school with sports facilities for your children? TBS is the best English medium school with sports facilities for our students such as football, athletics and badminton among others.