Sports Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore plans to have professionals monitor athletes in India

What's the story?

In what can be considered a groundbreaking move, the Sports Minister of India and Olympic Games silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore confirmed that the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports is working on a plan to monitor the progress of athletes in the country in order to get the best out of the athletes in several sports and boost Indian participation on an International level.

The proposed shake-up is set to include an order to hire International consultants who shall recruit professionals to execute flagship schemes in the country. The Sports Minister further highlighted the problem of administrators receiving pay as per the old system of bureaucracy which needs to be severely altered for more transparency.

In case you didn't know...

In the month of September, Rathore had announced that the TOPS-scheme athletes preparing for Tokyo Olympics, Asian Games and Commonwealth Games will receive an allowance of ?50,000 a month to meet their expenses in preparation for such big tournaments.

The heart of the matter

This announcement, reported by the Indian express, comes after several reports and complaints by athletes that there was an existing system of red-tape that stemmed perhaps from the political connection to sports.

Now, in order to do away with these problems, the introduction of professionals to monitor the progress of athletes will have financial autonomy so as to reduce such red-tape and create a more favourable environment for the athletes to work in. The Ministry will also have a new office set up in Khel Bhavan to set up a control room for the same.

What's next?

The Sports Ministry is also ready to organise a tournament called the National School Games which is set to begin in the month of January.

Author's take

Radical change is required in order to make India a sporting powerhouse. These changes will hopefully make a massive difference in the near future!