Lets digress a bit from sports….. and take a peekaboo into one of the raging issues of today- increase in the FDI limit for education. If this proposal goes through then we might end up having the likes of Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth here in India. In the U.S. at all levels of education, there is a section of the students called the ‘Jocks’, who are nothing but athletes who represent their alma mater in various sports. There are athletic scholarships available across 29 disciplines and almost across all colleges. These are funded by the universities and the corporate world as well. The nominees of these scholarships are called Student Athletes.
Back to India :-)
Unfortunately, this concept is non-existent in India. We are a sporting power only in Cricket and Chess; if we have to keep a high standard of what it means to be a sporting power. Our national game Hockey has fallen to bad ways, and lets not even go to the other sports. Our Olympic teams could not practice for the lack of ammunition (shooting) or shuttlecocks (badminton). Parents baulk at the idea of their children taking up sports as a career and are non-supportive and rightly so in most cases. We have a very weak infrastructure base and almost no proper grassroots development. The only place where we have some incentives in when the PSU’s hire sports persons to represent their teams (Air India, Railways, etc.).
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So is there a way out? I feel the best way to overcome many of these hurdles is to introduce the concept of a student athlete. Lets say for example purposes, about 1000 kids want to become 100m athletes. Now we know that out of them may be 5-6 (if we are lucky) will become competitive internationally with the proper training and stuff. What about the rest 995 odd kids? What do they do? Now let us assume that these kids are granted scholarships to universities across India and there are certain minimum academic criteria set for their eligibility to participate in athletics. Now the 995 kids who will not be able to compete professionally will end up having a university degree which will give them an opportunity to earn their living. Not only will this lead to a development of the athletes but it will start creating a tradition of sports amongst universities on a much broader scale. Maybe someday the Mumbai University – Pune University rivalry might be bigger than Harvard – Yale!
One question that begs to be answered is that who will fund all these scholarships? I think it has to be the corporates. The reason is two fold. One when the corporates fund them, there will be greater accountability and control over the scholarship disbursement. Secondly, this will be advantageous as the corporates will have a ready and known hiring base for their own work (remember the 995 with University degrees?) and this is a great way of increasing brand equity. Imagine a newspaper article headline, “XYZ wins Infosys sponsored Basketball scholarship to Bengaluru University”. The next step would be naming the seats in Universities after prominent company big-wigs, for e.g. the Ratan Tata chair for Athletics. Once it is sure that your child will not only be able to pursue his favorite sport but also get a decent education, parents will also become more supportive and there will be greater encouragement for the children.
We try and pour in money into so many things to improve sports in India, most of which comes up short. If we can merge the ideas of education and professional sports, I think its India’s way out.
