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The debate of including sports as a compulsory subject in schools has been going on for the past several years, particularly after the 1982 Asiad in Delhi. The demand has become forceful after India successfully hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, bagging a host of medals. Experts on the academic front in Delhi feel that sports has become a viable career option for students. It can be a serious subject of study with marks assigned so that students can pursue the sport of choice with commitment. But no individual can pursue sports to its logical goal without patronage and support. Playing a sport and training for it can often cost a fortune. Only parents with deep pockets can allow their wards to pursue sports as a full-time vocation. Also flourish will those who have got either sponsors or well-meaning god-fathers, who can give them the right breaks. This is particularly important in disciplines like cricket, tennis, badminton etc. With the introduction of sports in schools as a compulsory subject, not only would students be engaged in purposeful pursuits, but also help in the creation of sports infrastructure at the school-level, and its proper utilisation. Quality comes from quantity, and if more children take up sports as a full time career, the massive infrastructure created in Delhi for the Asiad and Commonwealth Games would be put to better and extensive use. Those schools, colleges and states, who have given sports a great push, like Punjab, Haryana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka etc have done well in sports at the national and international levels. And they say sports keep the young from negativity and vices like drugs and alcohol, though the present system of offering huge cash prizes for winning medals at the national and international levels, has a flip side too. The use of performance-enhancing drugs has become rampant ever since the Sports Ministry, the state governments and various other agencies started giving huge cash and other incentives to medal winners and champions. So, making sport as a serious subject of the curriculum with marks in schools and colleges will also encourage the use of performance-enhancing substances at a very young age, defeating the very purpose for which sports was introduced as a part of the school curriculum. In the past, some of the Delhi Schools, under dynamic principals, promoted sports with all the passion and resources at their command. As a result, these schools produced outstanding sportspersons who made the country proud. Mrs Bakshi of Air Force Bal Bharati School, Vibha Parthasarathi of Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, M.N.Kapoor and Mr Bakshi of Modern School are some of the finest examples of school principals playing the sheet-anchor for the development of sports. There was a time, cricketers from Air Force Bal Bharati School and Sardar Patel School represented India at regular intervals — like Kirti Azad (Modern School), Maninder Singh (Air Force Bal Bharati), Vivek Razan and Ajay Jadeja (Sardar Patel), Gursharan Singh (Bal Bharati), and many more. Present players like Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli etc flowered because of the support they got from their parents, coaches and schools. Former Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar was a vocal votary for giving sports a wider reach, by creating infrastructure at the school and panchayat levels. He had strongly felt that organising events like the Commonwealth Games in a city like Delhi was a huge and wasteful drain on the resources, which would serve really no purpose in fostering a sports culture in the country. Instead, he advocated that infrastructure should be created at the village-level for talent to emerge, and they could then be spotted and drafted for bigger roles at the national stage.
Introducing sports as a serious subject of study is a long-over due step, and if done with a long-term visitation, it can really uplift Indian sports from the present morass.
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