Sachin’s proposal hits roadblock
NEW DELHI: Call it government apathy or lackadaisical attitude on the part of officials as batting great Sachin Tendulkar’s visionary document to integrate sports into the education system has hit a roadblock.
Member of Parliament Tendulkar had opened his innings in the Rajya Sabha with a letter asking the government to focus on honing fresh talent in Indian sport, especially in schools and colleges and improving sports infrastructure at the university level.
Tendulkar, who was nominated to the Upper House earlier this year, had addressed his letter to former Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal and ex-sports Minister Ajay Maken. Tendulkar had given a two-page summary and attached a 25-slide presentation to show the road ahead for Indian sports.
Tendulkar’s proposal was largely based on the one prepared by the Sports Authority of India (SAI) last year to identify talent at the age of 13-15 years and to provide them with the best facilities and systematic training so as to enable them attain peak performance at the 2020 Olympics.
IDENTIFYING TALENT IN SCHOOL, COLLEGE
The ambitious scheme, modelled on the pattern of Chinese and Eastern European countries, talked about identifying talent at school and college level and put an ultra-modern monitoring sys tem in place to realise the medals dreams.
However, Tendulkar’s proposal has made no headway ever since it was submitted to the Sports and HRD ministries with the project still to see the light of the day. The modalities are yet to be worked out by NCERT to make sport a subject in school curriculum.
Tendulkar had drawn inspira tion from India’s strong showing at the London Olympics. He wants to make the country a sporting pow erhouse and to realise the dream of ‘sports for all’, the Rajya Sabha MP had suggested that sports should be made part of the school cur riculum.
When Tendulkar had sub mitted the proposal to then Sports Minister Maken, he had prompltly asked the sports secre tary Sindhushree Khullar to look into the document and involve SAI into the matter. Maken, after going through the presentaion, agreed to implement the project at the earliest and his views were endorsed by the 10 National Sports Federations (NSFS).