The future of the Internet?
India is a huge country with massive population. Our population is in fact a resource of the nation. The disappointing performance of the Indian players in Asian games has made the people think about the deteriorating condition of sports in India. The Asian Games is the second biggest sports event after Olympics in the world. A country with the second largest population has nearly won 11 gold medals and stood at 8th position in medal tally in recently concluded 2014 Asian Games in South Korea.
Unfortunately, the sports do not get more importance in India. Neither people are much aware of day to day developments in sports. In India career in sports do not have safe future, so children and their family do not take any risk about the future of their children in sports. Cricket is very famous in this country, however other sports like football, shooting, swimming which are the games of skills and hard work are not preferred by the people of this country. Similarly people do not have interest in athletics which needs perspiration and rigorous hard work.
Reasons are not far to seek. Sports person in India are not provided proper facilities of equipment and gym. There is scarcity of proper infrastructure for sports. They do not even get rich diet. Coaches are not up to the mark for the reason of availability of sufficient fund allocation. A few prominent sportspersons do get respectable jobs in reputed companies or government organization but rest of the lot does not. Even after retirement of sportsperson which normally takes place at the age of 30-40, they then become jobless as no provision has been made by the government to take care of them. This discourages the young people from taking part in sports.
This apart there is a politics by way of selection in the games is mostly based on favouritism and ignorance of deserving players only for their only fault that they do not relate to some influential person. In the incidence of Sarita Devi in, it is said that the officials of India did not support her when she lodged protest against the decision of the referee.
To improve the performance of sports in Asian games and Olympics, the first and fore most important thing is that the government should provide proper infrastructure and improve the quality of facilities given to players. In addition to this, the government should ensure that the sportspersons do get good stadiums with ultra-modern facilities, good coaches, sports equipment, and suitable condition to various sports and time to time felicitation to the achievement made by the sportspersons at different level. The government should focus at the school level sports, so student from school will get exposer and new talent will be found. For development of various sports, the Government should start leagues in different regions of the country which in turn will give platform to young and promising players and a new talent will immerge. The leagues like Indian Super League for football, Indian Badminton League for badminton, Pro Kabbadi league for kabbadi and also there is league of tennis and that's why the quality of these sports has upgraded now a days.
It is not that India does not have talent. Otherwise we could not see a Gold medal in hockey after a gap of 16 years. The world champion Mary Kom has made a remarkable record by winning medals in all big events like commonwealth games, Asian games. There were also quite impressive performances in badminton, tennis, and squash by Indians. India has seen a golden period in 1986 when P.T. Usha alone captured 4 gold and 1 silver. India's best performance in Asian games was in 1951 by winning 15 gold medals but now we are not able to win more gold medals.
Let us hope government should take further steps for development of the sports, and also people will be aware of it. India will get more medals and rank among first three in Asian Games and also do some good performance in other big events.
Anuj Mehta
