khelo india
| Date :06-Jan-2020 |
PULLELA Gopichand, the national badminton coach, rated as one of the prominent inspirations behind Indian badminton’s rise at international level, is all praise for the Government of India’s Khelo India Youth Games and naturally so, for any sportsperson would welcome such an initiative from the Government. Gopichand is happy over the concept of Youth Games under Khelo India because all sportspersons get the opportunity to showcase their talents and if they have the necessary skills they even have the chance of winning yearly scholarship of Rs. five lakhs for eight years.
There is, therefore, no denying that Khelo India Youth Games offer a window to deserving sportspersons to exhibit their talents in a very competitive atmosphere with all the attendant world class infrastructure made available. The Union Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs has set a very laudable objective in launching the Khelo India programme. It aims to provide all the necessary infrastructure and world standard coaching facilities to deserving sportspersons so that young sportspersons get whatever is necessary for development of their skills and pick them up when they are ready to do national duty at international level. In the last five years many sportspersons have benefitted from the Government’s help by way of financial support as well as other necessary assistance needed by athletes.
The Government’s laudable aim behind launching the Khelo India initiative is to provide all the facilities to talented sportspersons and fully exploit their skills so that the country emerges as one of the sports powers in the world. The Government’s understanding is that there is huge unexplored potential in the country to become world power in sports. What is needed is support from the Government. That the Government has chosen most of the Olympic Games disciplines for promotion shows that it wants its athletes to join the best in the business at global level. It is for this reason that competitions are held for all Olympic level games under the Khelo India Youth Games.
There was often complaint in the past about lack of international facilities for sports. In fact at Government level sports received much less importance and priority with very negligible budget being earmarked for promotion of sports. As a result India performed very poorly at international events like Olympics, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and other world events. The National Democratic Alliance Government looks at sports as an essential activity for character building, raising of a disciplined generation, commitment to a cause. In a nutshell development of a complete personality, a responsible citizen.