Upgrading sports facilities

Without prejudice to anybody, we have reasons to say that not much has been done in our State to cultivate the youth that have enormous talent for sports and athletic arts. Let us not go into the futile debate on the reasons but concentrate on what can be done now that the Central Government has allocated 200 crore rupees for the development of two sports stadia one at Srinagar and the other at Jammu. It is heartening news for sports lovers across the State that the authorities have drawn the plan of raising the two existing stadia, Bakhshi Stadium in Srinagar and MA Stadium in Jammu to international standards in all respects. Each stadium will have the capacity of accommodating 40,000 spectators and residential quarters for the athletic corps. The scheme does not leave the district towns out of the scope of developing both indoor and outdoor games mini-stadia. The Chief Minister has also recommended water sports at Manasbal Lake as part of the development scheme of sports in the State.
We have enormous talent in our youth. The difficulty is that they do not have the exposure and facilities that would help them develop their talent. While stadia will be improved and even in districts activity of giving fillip to sports will emerge, the truth is in the axiom “catch them young”. The Sports Department should float a scheme under which search for talent is conducted regularly and at short intervals to find the young athletes and sportsmen/women to be inducted into broad sports development programme. Our rural areas should not be left out of this scheme rather in fact more attention has to be paid to talent search in rural areas.  Sports carnivals and meets have to be floated on district level and even on tehsil level only to search and catch the young and promising youth who can make a mark in the field of sports. It is one of the choicest ways of keeping the youth engaged for constructive activity.

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