Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (Bring cheers to all BPL families) that was published in Newsband

Bring cheers to all BPL families

To give boost to Indian sports, our sports authorities should catch promising youngsters showing talents and put them under a systematic coaching and training schedules for attaining perfection to international standards. We can study and learn a lot from the Chinese coaching system as it is reaping very good yields. India's poor performance in International Sports Meets is mainly due to half- baked approaches in the matters of selection of the right persons and the right type of coaching and training.

How neglected are our athletes should also be a matter of our concern. We have a lot of deserving youngsters who can represent India at international level, but because of the scarcity of resources and reckless behavior of government towards the games, these talents go undetected. Its time to do something drastic to save Indian sports, especially at international level.

Haven't we been introspecting for the last so many decades about how to improve our sporting spirit? And where have we got so far? The athletes who won medals are the best of the best, because they have achieved this despite great stress from the babus and babas in sports. When a country like Jamaica can take four golds we need to truly introspect as to what we need to do to get there. But, this will not happen till the government remains in control of sporting activities. The government sector is corrupt, lethargic, inefficient and driven by the politics of indecision and far removed from understanding the requirements of the different sports activities. We need the government to only provide funds and hand it over to professional managers and eminent sportspersons for maximum results.

If you consider metro cities, there are hardly any play grounds. If you consider tier two or tier three cities situation is not any different. In such a scenario sports is the last thing in the minds of both students and parents. On the contrary there are some thirty crore people who are just surviving, living a sub-standard life. Therefore, if we alleviate poverty of all those below poverty line (BPL) families, then that is far more important than winning medals. If we increase living standards of all the BPL families, our nation and all sections of our people will be far more prepared to achieve excellence in not only sports but in many other fields like science, arts and what not. Let us therefore dedicate our efforts for alleviation of poverty and bring cheers to all BPL families which are worth a million medals.