National Sports Day is observed on 29th August every year to mark the birthday of legendary Hockey Olympian, Major Dhyan Chand Singh. The day is observed to spread awareness on the importance of sports and daily activities in everyone’s life. India is home to the birth of many indigenous sports like Kabaddi, Chess, Kho-Kho, wrestling and Badminton.
Our country has also produced many sporting icons who have brought laurels to the country by winning medals at Olympics and World Championships. Yet, we lack behind with many adversities, it may be because we lack sports culture, lack of infrastructure, lack of sponsorship, lack of recognition and whatnot. But the point is what is the solution to emerge out as a sporting powerhouse or exceptionally grow as a multi-sporting country? What do you think should be the holistic approach to build a well insulated sporting community by tapping into the entire potential of the country’s glorious 1.33 billion people?
National Sports Day is also known as the Rashtriya Khel Divas. The day was first inducted into the list of celebratory days in the year 2012. National Sports Day is the centre of attraction for ardent sports lovers of the country. The main reason behind celebrating National Sports Day lies in championing the spirit of sportsmanship and propagating the message of various sports
Fit India Movement
In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched ‘Fit India Campain’ on the occasion of National Sports Day. The nationwide campaign aims to encourage people to inculcate physical activity and sports in their everyday lives. Under this, a committee comprised of several government officials, members of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA), national sports federations, private bodies, and fitness promoters was formed to advise the government on the Fit India Movement
The 28-member committee is headed by the chairmanship of Union Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju. Among the members of the committee, 12 officials are from the government, including secretaries of Sports, Secondary Education, Ayush, Youth Affairs, among others. As per the guidelines of CBSE, fitness plan and plans to incorporate the same in students and staff’s daily physical activities has been planned.
Under the campaign of the Fit India Movement, many events are held. It aims to make students realize that they are citizens of a democratic country which is diverse in terms of culture and religion but there is unity in Diversity, Traditional games were played by students and teachers also
The first and foremost reason is that our nation’s sport governance is marred by nepotism, corruption scandals, ineffective leadership, lack of transparency, and mismanagement. This, in turn, leads to lofty policies with no proper roadmap and displaced priorities, impacting the allocation of resources, thus affecting the country’s sporting infrastructure, grassroots programmes, and eventually the people
From 1920 to 2020, it has been a 100-year journey so far for India in the biggest sporting event i.e. Olympics. India a country with a population of 1.3 billion has merely 28 medals to its name in total. This shows we lack the sporting culture in our country. India turned into a cricket centric nation but over the years we have tried our efforts to make raise awareness on being a multi-sporting nation. Sports was never considered an industry and now that it is, the corporate companies have tried to step up and work on providing the nation with world class facilities. Khelo India and fit India movements have encouraged the grassroot level athletes to take sports seriously. Where India lacks is, in discipline and culture, if this is corrected so will the sporting future be.
