NITI Aayog chalks up plan to secure 50 medals in 2024 Olympics

23 September 2016 Current Affairs: NITI Aayog, the think tank of union government, has devised a short –term and medium-to-long term action plan to help India achieve 50 medals in 2024 summer Olympics.

In its action plan for revitalising sports in India, Niti Aayog said, India still does not have a conducive environment for sports to polish the talent of Indian sports persons and make them at par with their global counterparts.

Short-term vision (4-8 years) : it envisages targeting a group of priority sports, organising sports persons into three groups for each priority sport, harnessing the potential of indigenous and regional sports, selecting world-class coaches as well as a grading system for coaches.

This term will also focus on a sports injury insurance scheme, strengthening and scaling up of existing SAI training centres, facilitating creation of sports academies for individual sports and more. It also looks forward towards creating a digital database for sports, implementing national sports code and sports Bill and promoting revenue generating methods for team leagues of priority sports.

Medium to long term vision (8-15 years) : It will focus on identifying talent at a young age, having sports curriculum in schools, a dedicated training program for coaches, encouraging development of sports infrastructure through private or PPP mode and developing a health and psychological support division.

For Group B and C also, the budgets for the next 4 years should be fixed, with consistent funding allocation for each year. Funding data for all the groups should be publicly made available as soon as it gets finalised.