SPORTS GOVERNANCE

SPORTS GOVERNANCE

Sport governance refers to the exercise of power, with consideration given to influence, authority, and the nature of decision making. Governance can occur at the local, state, national, and international levels.

Issues associated with sport governance in India

1. Institutional
   • Lack of transparency & accountability: Current model of governance of Indian sports clearly lacks accountability and transparency, which creates an environment that is conducive to wide-scale corruption, threatening tournament’s overall credibility.
     • Example: Central Vigilance commission [CVC] report has highlighted irregularities in many projects of Commonwealth Games 2010 which was held in India.
   • Rights and Responsibility: Currently in Indian sport there is little distinction between management and governance.
   • Insufficient Infrastructure: Poor sports infrastructure in India is a major challenge. This is one of the major reasons for India’s poor performance at global events like Olympic games.
   • Inadequate funding: The issue of inadequate funding to sports that is comparatively less than other countries.
     • Example: In India, most of the funding comes from the governmental sources, whereas in countries like The USA, most of its sports funding comes from private organizations.
2. Sports Related
   • Performance enhancing drugs: It is still one of the major problems in sports. Despite the creation of NADA-National Anti Doping Agency, this problem has not been solved effectively.
   • Sports as hobby or profession: Sports is primarily viewed as a hobby rather than a profession due to the low success rate in India. It makes it difficult for youths to choose sports as a profession.
   • Match Fixing: In 2013 Indian Premier League [IPL] there were cases of match fixing and betting. The Supreme Court had appointed the Lodha committee to study and recommend solutions to this problem.
   • Degraded quality: There has been a downfall in the quality of performance by sportspersons, which is also a result of inefficiency in administration, corruption in the governance of sports, political control, nepotism, no infrastructure development, and functional issues within the administration itself.
   • Lack of ex-sports persons in sport administration: Sports administrative bodies should have proper and sufficient representation from ex-sportspersons, which is currently lacking.
   • Lack of hierarchy at grass root level: Another major problem in sports in India is the lack of sports infrastructure at the grassroots level. There is no training or teaching at the block or district level for children who wish to be athletes, and their talent is not nurtured properly or directed correctly. As a result, the country loses potential talents.

Recent initiatives taken to promote sports in India

• Fit India Movement: FIT INDIA Movement was launched in 2019 by PM Narendra Modi with a view to make fitness an integral part of our daily lives and to encourage indigenous sports.
• Khelo India: The Khelo India Scheme is the flagship Central Sector Scheme of the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports. It aims at infusing sports culture and achieving sporting excellence in the country, thus allowing the populace to harness the power of sports through its cross-cutting influence.
• SAI training centre scheme: Sports Authority of India (SAI), an autonomous body under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, is implementing the Sports Promotional schemes across the country to identify talented sports persons and nurture them to excel at national and international competitions

• Sports talent search portal: With an aim to attract talented sports persons from all over the country, the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports through Sports Authority of India (SAI) has launched National Talent Search Portal (NTSP). The NTSP allows access to the talented sportspersons from any part of the country to upload their online applications in their desired sports discipline for admission in Sports Centres run by SAI under its various sport’s promotional schemes.
• National Sports Awards Scheme: Various national awards such as Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, the Arjuna Award, etc., are given to meritorious sportspersons.
• Target Olympic Podium: Target Olympic Podium Scheme is a flagship program which is an attempt to provide assistance to India’s top athletes. The Scheme looks to add a premium to the preparations of these athletes so that they can win Olympic medals in 2020 and 2024 Olympics.

Way forward

• Transparency: To maintain transparency with expenditure and fund utilization, information like a board of members, administrative officials, and remuneration information must be in the public domain.
• Better infrastructure: India will have to invest massively in building world-class infrastructure with international best practices in sports training, research, and analysis across the sport institutions with adequate attention to all major sports in order to become a leading sport nation globally.
  • The quality of infrastructure in rural areas should be of world-class as 68% of the population still lives in villages.
• Rules and Regulations: Like other fields, sports also have conflicts regarding disciplinary, administrative, and management issues. To solve these issues, governing bodies must set up a common judicial system (tribunal) to deal with sports-related conflicts.
• Women Representation: It is very important to have sufficient women representation in sports as well as in the administrative bodies. It is the responsibility of these admin bodies to ensure sufficient representation from women in the board too, to maintain the diversity within the board.
• Restructuring Governance and Management: There is a need for clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities among different bodies involved in the Indian sport sector to address the existing gaps.
• Sport awareness: There is a need to incorporate sport into our daily lives. The current education system needs to be revamped, and it should give equal importance to sport as it does to education.
• Plans: There should be fixed timelines disclosed which are to be adopted by sports bodies for the purpose of growth and development of sports in the future, which is to be achieved in a given specific period of time.
• Potential Training sport Hub: India has immense coaching talent with huge experience in different sports that can act as a catalyst for the development of sports in India as a training hub for sports like Kabaddi, Cricket, hockey, etc., at an international sphere.
• Committees: To set up specific committees for specific activities relating to sports, such as planning, financing, research, and development purposes. These committees would look after the particular tasks, which would bring transparency in work and achieving the common objective.

India is currently having one of the youngest populations in the world. If proper training is given to youths, India can do much better in international events like Commonwealth Games, Olympic games, etc.