Rural Sports - Gramin Khel Kud Abhiyan, Govt Of Sikkim
India has the Largest body of youth in the world with an average age of about 25 years. To harness their energy and potential in the right earnest is one of the priorities for any Government. The Hon’ble Chief Minister of Sikkim has a vision to broad base the sporting activities in the rural areas also so as to spot the talents which are wasted because of lack of facilities. The immortal lines from Greys’ ‘Elegy’ can be appropriately recounted here, to serve as a reminder of an obligation owed to those who may have been forgotten:
’’full many a gem of the purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of the ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
To waste its’ sweetest in the desert air’’
In view of this we have framed a Rural Sports Policy, as substantial amount of money is being pumped into the villages through the Gram Panchayat Units and the Zilla Panchayats. The Sikkim State Rural Sports Policy will have 2 pronged purposes:
1) To engage rural youth in sporting activities.
2) To create a pathway for the talented towards national level competition.
The policy therefore, seeks to be in tandem with the sports policy of the state and the work of the different associations overseeing the promotion of a particular sport in the State as a whole. Sports in the rural areas must, merge seamlessly with sports at the State level with international competition a logical conclusion to the former. By this, the idea is to achieve broad basing of the rural sports so as to give exposure of large number of youths for sporting activities, talent search in the rural areas, equipment, infra structure and technical support and also to create rural sports libraries in all the Gram Panchayat Units and Block offices.
