India at Paris Olympics 2024

Finishing with six medals, India slipped from 48th to 71st place in Paris Olympic 2024 medal tally. 

• Neeraj Chopra, Manu Bhaker, Sarabjot Singh, Swapnil Kusale, Aman Sehrawat and the Indian hockey team contributed in the six medals, including a silver and five bronze.

India at Paris Olympics 2024

India matched its second-best finish of six medals, achieved in London 2012, and the performance, for which the central government spent hundreds of crores through the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) and Mission Olympic Cell (MOC) to provide all sorts of support to the athletes, may make the decision makers brainstorm.

• Indian athletes who performed well at the Paris Olympics 2024 hold great promise for the future. 
• Their dedication and talent indicate that they will be strong contenders in upcoming international events. 
• These top Indian players in Paris Olympics 2024 have set a high bar for future athletes.

Sports in India

Sport covers a range of activities performed within a set of rules and undertaken as part of leisure or competition. Sporting activities involve physical activity carried out by teams or individuals and may be supported by an institutional framework, such as a sporting agency.

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• History of Indian Sports: The sports history of India dates back to the 4th Century BCE when traditional sports such as Kho-Kho and Kabaddi originated. 
  • Harappan civilization shows weapons which resemble the modern day javelin, round balls which resembles the shot put ball and a disc shaped instrument resembling the modern day discus. 
    • Literature review reveals that the javelin was called’ toran’ and the discus as ‘chakra’. All these relics throw light upon the pastimes of the people, and also that games like javelin and discus throw could have originated from this period.
  • Ancient texts like the Mahabharata, written around the 3rd century BCE, mention martial arts and archery as activities that were carried out during that era. 
    • Even indoor games like Chess and Snakes and Ladders have origins in ancient India, in the form of games of Chaturanga and Gyan Chauper, respectively.
• Colonial Influence: The British, with their love for organised sporting events, established the first cricket club in India in 1792 and greatly propagated the sport in the country.
  • Other sports like football, tennis, and golf began to find their footing. The establishment of the Calcutta Football Club in 1872 marked the beginning of organised football in India. 
  • The British also took many indigenous games and made adaptations of their own to form brand-new sports, with badminton being a prime example.
• Emergence of Indigenous Sports: As Indians adopted British sports, they also preserved their own rich sporting heritage. Kushti, or traditional Indian wrestling, continued to thrive and found its place in the Olympics. Kabaddi, a contact sport that requires agility and strength, became popular in villages across the country. 
  • These indigenous sports, with deep-rooted traditions, represented the true spirit of India’s sporting identity.

Importance of Sports

Apart from wins, losses, and other physical or mental benefits, sports can mold individuals into resilient, disciplined, and collaborative beings. There are many invaluable lessons to learn even by watching them, but playing a sport helps in practising them. 

• Physical Health: An enjoyable way of engaging physical abilities in application is through sports. Regular participation helps maintain a healthy weight, build muscle, and enhance cardiovascular fitness. 
  • Healthy Lifestyle: Athletes often develop a heightened awareness of nutrition, as they should follow a strict diet to keep their fitness and balance at an optimum level at any point in time. 
• Mental Well-being: Along with physical fitness, sports support mental health and enhance it. Many studies and research have proven that stress reduction improves mental health. 
  • Physical activity triggers the release of endorphins and mood enhancers. These help in reducing stress, and anxiety, and promoting a positive attitude. 
  • As sports involve cognitive practices like strategic planning, decision-making, and quick reflexes, they help in developing an attitude of mental acuity and concentration. 
• Social Skills: Many sports are inherently team-oriented. The team needs efficient communication and interpersonal skills to achieve success in a game. 
  • Learning to work efficiently teaches valuable lessons in cooperation, communication, and shared responsibility. Sports offer opportunities for individuals to take on leadership roles. 
• Goal Setting and Achievement: Each sport has its destination in terms of time or a number where a team emerges victorious or reaches later to the point. Such reach needs a great deal of preparation, planning, and strategies. The goal-setting process helps in focusing efforts, staying motivated, and tracking progress. 
  • Setting a goal is a type of strategy to set for each chore or project in life and keep the progress. 
• Character Development: Facing challenges, setbacks, and defeats in sports teaches us to fight back with a new strategy and be diligent. These lessons instil resilience in the face of life’s adversity. 
  • These inculcate a sportsmanship spirit in the minds of the players or a team to respect the adversaries in both sports or life, accepting defeat and working on them later. These tend to sharpen the character of an individual. 
• Cultural and Global Understanding: Sports has the greatest quality to serve as a universal language that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers. 
  • Events like ‘CommonWealth’ or ‘Olympics’ bring people from diverse places or backgrounds together into one platform. Sports events like these promote global unity and understanding. 
  • Engaging in sports helps in accepting diverse cultures and imbibes a sense of brotherhood. 
• Academic and Professional Success: We have many scenarios where athletes progress and win even with the academics as they do on the field. 
  • There are career choices like coaching, sports management, acting as a team Manager, sports commentator, sports representative, sports journalism, and other sports-related aspects. 
  • Leadership or mentorship can be made useful to impart knowledge and wisdom within the sport to the world through better platforms. 
• A Platform for Equality and Inclusion: Sports can bring together people from diverse classes, caste, race, gender, and abilities. 
  • From acting as an agent of women empowerment to a platform for promoting equality among different races and castes, participation in sports opens the door for people who are deprived of opportunities in other areas.
• Revenue Generation: Developing robust sports infrastructure will allow India to host a greater number of international events and such hosting boosts tourism in the country and results in enhancing the revenue and employment.
  • The global sports tourism market size, valued at $323 million (₹2,697 crores) in 2020, is projected to reach $1.8 billion (₹15,046 crores) by 2030.

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Challenges with Sports in India

Various challenges have been faced by sportspersons in India such as traditionally, sports are viewed more as leisure activities than as promising careers. 

• Attitudinal Barriers: Sports are typically considered as secondary interests, with career goals naturally leaning towards fields such as engineering, medicine, commerce, or civil services. 
  • Social norms, lack of facilities, scarcity of financial incentives and predominance of some sports—like cricket—over others were some of the causes of this way of thinking. 
  • The growth and development of athletes in India across disciplines have been hampered by the belief that sports do not represent a long-term viable profession. This has resulted in talent being underutilised, economic growth prospects being lost and limited international recognition in sports other than cricket. 
  • However, in recent years, due to the support by the government and personal choices, the younger generation’s perception is shifting towards choosing a career in sports. 
• Absence of Sports Culture: Indian sports is marred by fundamental issues such as lack of mass participation, insufficient public infrastructure for sports and a lack of sporting culture at the grassroots. 
  • This is not to say that there is a lack of talent, rather the country lacks a structured sports policy framework.
• Less Funding: India spends way less than China, the US, and other better-performing countries in international sporting events. Hence, athletes do private spending for arranging good quality equipment, training and travelling, thereby creating a very big hurdle for poor people.
  • India shells out just about 1.13% on sports when compared to what the Chinese spend every year.
• Resource Deficit: India is lacking in providing adequate and good-quality sporting infrastructure available across the country. The government has developed some good stadiums in urban regions, but the situation is very poor in rural regions.
• Performance Pressure: A high degree of pressure is inflicted upon a sportsperson to perform best and this sometimes creates excessive mental stress in them or induces them to resort to unethical means like doping. 
• Governance Issues: The expenditure on sports is highly skewed in favour of male athletes and urban regions, in comparison to females and rural areas.
  • There have been allegations of bias and nepotism in the selection process, especially against the lower castes.
  • There is more focus on post-success incentivisation rather than pre-success support such as the State Governments announcing rewards after victory in International events.
• Religious Barriers: Some sports like swimming and athletics require attire that does not fully cover a woman’s body and are against the laws of some religions.
• Others: 
  • Poverty: The participation and the ability to perform gets further reduced due to financial constraints and also close to 2 in every 5 children are suffering from some form of malnutrition. 
  • Lack of Awareness: For a large section of the population in India, sports end at cricket and hockey. There is limited awareness about the other sports, their events and the opportunities that exist therein.
  • Mismanagement of issues affecting athletics like Vinesh Phogat and Antim Panghal. 
    • Despite Antim’s strong qualifications and high expectations, the bout ended 10-0, possibly influenced by the unsettling events involving Vinesh Phogat earlier.

Initiatives to Promote Sports in India

Operation Division of Sports Authority of India (SAI) deals with implementation of different sports promotional schemes. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MYAS) provides funds to SAI for implementation of schemes for promotion of sports through training centres established by SAI. 

• Budgetary Support: The recent budget for SAI, which apart from maintaining its stadia across the country also manages the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS) to prepare athletes for the global sporting extravaganzas, has also been enhanced from ₹795.77 crore to ₹822.60 crore.
  • Khelo India Scheme: It is the government’s flagship project to promote sports at the grassroots level, was once again the biggest beneficiary in the union budget for the sports ministry as it was assigned ₹900 crore.
    • Khelo India scheme, launched in 2018 aims to create a sports ecosystem in the country and provide a platform for young athletes to showcase their skills.
    • Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS): To achieve India’s Olympics Medal dream, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports established a flagship program to assist India’s top athletes. 
      • Its primary goal is to identify premier athletes who are potential medal winners in the Olympic Games. Once the premier athletes are identified, they fund them and also nurture them.
• National Sports Policy: It was first established in India in 1984 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. It aimed at improving the overall sports performance of the country at national and international levels. The policy was updated in 2001 and more recently in 2011 to expand the overall objectives.
• National Sports Talent Contest Scheme (NSTC): The NSTC is implemented to target Sub-Junior level trainees. Its primary function is to identify talented players in the 8 – 16 years age group and offer them grants and experienced coaches to nurture their talent. 
  • The NSTC scheme also aims to uplift traditional indigenous sports in the country. 
    • Example: NSTC Akharas is a prime example of the scheme. 
• Fit India Movement: It was launched on the 29th of August 2019 on the 7th National Sports Day by the Prime Minister to make fitness an integral part of day-to-day lives. Its Subsidiary programs such as ‘Fitness ki dose aadha ghanta roz’ has been one of the most popular schemes for sports in India. 
  • Moreover, it revived indigenous sports like Akhada Kushti, Thang-Ta, Kalaripayattu, Kho Kho, Mallakhamb, Kabaddi and Gatka.
• Special Area Game Scheme (SAG): It is a scheme for sports training in India that aims to identify mainstream sports from tribal, rural, hilly, and coastal areas of the country. 
  • The sports scheme targets junior-level trainees, allowing the sports authorities to mould and nurture them to achieve excellence in sports. 
  • The unique scheme also identifies future talent from indigenous games and martial arts from various regions and communities. 
    • Example: Kalaripayattu from Kerala, the SAG Scheme, confirms that the natives of Kerala are in an advantageous position to perform better due to their genetic diversity and discipline. 
• National Centre of Sports Sciences and Research (NCSSR): It aims to support high-level research, education, and innovation with respect to the high performance of elite athletes. 
  • It has two components- one is the setting up of NCSSR and the other is focused on funding the creation of Sports Sciences Departments in Six Universities and Sports Medicine Departments in Six Medical Colleges.
• National Sports Development Fund (NSDF): It was established in November 1998 under the Charitable Endowments Act, 1890 with the aim of promoting sports in India.

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Way Forward

Adequate infrastructure is the need of the hour, better stadiums and excellent facilities should be constructed across the country and awareness needs to be spread towards sports to encourage positive attitude and boost the mental and physical health of the children. 

• Increase Fund Allocation: The Government should increase fund allocation to other sports and also ensure equitable allocation of funds across gender and regions. 
  • The Government must offer deserving players more jobs and remuneration in order to encourage them to take sports as a career.
  • MGNREGS funds could be utilised to build sports infrastructure in rural areas. 
  • An increased budgetary allocation with a ‘sports manifesto’ would cater to the increasing demand for sports infrastructure. Overall, there is a need to leverage the diversity of sports in the country beyond the traditional domains. Hence, India could benefit from the demographic dividend, ensure mass participation, explore tourism potential, and promote health.
• Reform Sporting Bodies: There is the pressing need to change sporting federations function. As the Wrestling Federation of India controversy highlighted, politicians, their kin, or their aides continue to rule the roost at many of these bodies, often at the cost of athletes.
  • The National Sports Development Code of India, meant to reform their functioning, is yet to be followed by many federations.
• Focus on Mentors: Coaches can be called as the backbone of sports, thus there should be proper training sessions for them, with the need to hire them in more numbers and even paid well.
  • Apart from sportspeople, the focus should be placed on creating more coaches and physiotherapists that help in increasing the trained manpower experts in Sports Sciences and Sports Medicine that will reduce the dependency of the foreign experts.
• Support of Media: Media needs to highlight all sports, and make people aware about all sports and not only cricket. Encouragement of each and every sport is needed to improve the sports standards.
• Accord Fundamental Right: At the policy level, sports scholars in India have repeatedly called for the inclusion of sports in the Concurrent List (common interest to both Centre and State). 
  • Such intervention would ensure that sports policy can intersect with health, education, and gender issues. At the same time, a ‘Right to Sports’ should be covered in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution for better implementation of macro-policies around sports.
• A Collaborative Approach: Government along with society and private institutions should lend a helping hand to work for the welfare of the sports committee.
  • Sports is a state subject and therefore uniformity in sports-specific activities of various states in India is extremely important for providing equal sporting opportunities to all the citizens of the country.
    • Example: The country offers stellar examples such as the ‘Haryana model’ that caters to athletics, and that of Pullela Gopichand’s efforts to make Hyderabad the ‘badminton capital’. 
  • India can adopt meso-level approaches with region-specific circumstances to integrate players, playgrounds and policies.
  • The ‘one panchayat, one playground’ initiative by the Kerala Government is a parameter that can be advocated across States to promote sporting culture at the grassroots. 
  • Moreover, the scope of public-private-partnerships (PPPs) for sporting infrastructure should be extended to Tier-2 cities of India to create purposeful urban topographies that cater to sports.
• Learn from Others: India needs to take learning from other countries who are performing better in international events such as China. China first participated in the Summer Olympics in 1984. Since then, China has been among the top-performing countries at the Games. 
  • Example: In China, at an early age, children were encouraged to enroll in sports like gymnastics and table tennis at specialised training institutions. For parents from poorer and rural backgrounds, provision of food and other necessities is available.
  • African athletes shine and break major world records at high-profile global sporting events. Several countries in Africa are known for their sterling athletic performance to include Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Algeria.
• Others: 
  • Standardisation of Playgrounds: There is a need to standardise playgrounds within schools to optimise resource utilisation and facilitate athletic upbringing. 
  • Build up Transparency: Transparency must be brought in the selection procedure in order to reduce nepotism in the selection of candidates.
  • Time for Encouragement: Parents and educational institutions must also encourage the students to excel in sports, not just in academics. This requires an increase in the Sports quota. 
    • Parents can be sensitised with the support of NGOs and civil society groups to put their children in sports such as Bridges of Sports is sensitising the Siddi Community of coastal Karnataka to send their children in sports.
  • Advanced Equipment: It needs to be provided to the sportspersons of the country, so that they can be trained at a good level to compete with others.
  • Regular Monitoring: The athletes who are undergoing training, need to be continuously monitored in order to improve sports standard and fix the lacuna where they find any sort of drawbacks.
  • Focus on Healthy India: Health is the major factor that affects performance in any sports, if they are not fit they won’t be able to perform well. Proper health chart and diet plan should be provided to the players.
  • Region-specific Traditional Sports: It needs to be promoted to ensure mass participation and cultivate an interest among people. 
    • Localised sports mega events such as ‘Rural Olympics’, on the lines of what the Rajasthan government has done, should be promoted countrywide to make traditional as well as modern sports accessible.

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Conclusion

For India to become a sporting nation, India needs to know sports better. Sports needs to be celebrated for the inherent value it possesses in expanding human ability. It needs to be appreciated for the human skills it enhances and be considered a way of life.

• To put the heart-breaking moments into perspective, it is required to continue with the all-round support so that the near-misses can be transformed into medals as the country aspires to bid for the 2036 Olympics.

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