To take Indian sports forward, SAI must make every effort to recruit and retain qualified coaches, nurture talented sportspersons, and provide international-standard facilities.
India’s dream of becoming a sporting nation still remains unfulfilled as we have not been able to provide our budding sportspersons with standard training facilities and also the requisite exposure to the international sporting arena. As a result, plenty of sportspersons have so far failed to earn laurels for the country despite having enough talent to be one of the best in the world. As per the present indications, the situation is not going to change soon as the central government itself has admitted on the floor of the Rajya Sabha to huge vacancies of trained coaches in the Sports Authority of India (SAI), the organisation responsible for the upliftment of sports in the country.
According to government records, only 860 coaches are currently working with SAI against a sanctioned strength of 1,524. Even more concerning, SAI has only 15 high-performance coaches in place of the sanctioned 50, along with significant shortages in both chief coach and senior coach categories. With just a couple of years left for the next Summer Olympics and several international events ahead, this is hardly good news for Indian sport and raises serious concerns about the future of sporting activities in the country.
If those responsible for the progress of sports in the country are sincere in avoiding a dismal performance in the next Olympics, they should make efforts to control the damage on a war footing. If India is really interested in competing with sporting superpowers like China, South Korea, along with the US and Russia at the international level including the Olympics, the country must have adequate numbers of qualified coaches in SAI, a prerequisite for success in today’s sports. At the same time, the coaches should be given a free hand to pick their wards and train them according to their own schedules. There should be no interference in the selection of the sportspersons as nepotism has marred the progress of Indian sports for long.
Equally important is the need to substantially increase coaches’ salaries. Many qualified coaches have already left SAI citing poor pay, while private academies have successfully lured them with attractive packages. This exodus is one of the main reasons behind the current shortage in SAI.
To take Indian sports forward, SAI must make every effort to recruit and retain qualified coaches, nurture talented sportspersons, and provide international-standard facilities. A stronger thrust on sports could also help address some of the challenges hindering the country’s overall progress. For example, the failure to provide adequate importance to sports in India has affected the Northeastern region most, as the people here are more genetically gifted to excel in sports than those of the other states of the country. If proper facilities were provided to the Northeastern sportspersons to utilise their potential fully, the region would surely become a jewel on the Indian crown rather than being referred to as one of the backward areas in the country.