The best thing about sport is you cannot do it without absolute involvement. The essence of life is in our involvement. Sport demands involvement. You can go to school or college without involvement, you can go to your office without involvement, you can even get married without involvement, but you cannot do sport without involvement – nothing will happen the way you want it.
When you kick or hit a ball, it will not go where you want it to go unless there is absolute involvement. In society, whatever does not happen, you can cover up by blaming someone else. But in sport, it stands out starkly – in your face – that you are responsible for what you are doing. This is the best aspect of sport. Should this come into our life? Absolutely! So how do we make sport a part of this nation?
For 1.4 billion people, we do not play enough sport. For the population that we have, we should have a team for every game on the planet. When a country like Costa Rica, with a population of five million, can send their team to the Football World Cup but we cannot, it is simply because we have never seen sport as an important part of our lives. In many ways, we have dropped our playfulness in this country, for which we are paying a very heavy price.
I think the previous generation was too concerned about survival. So, they thought sport would destroy one's education and career possibilities, which was a reality at one time. But now, things have changed considerably for a good section of the population. It is time we bring back sports on all levels. It need not always be a competitive sport; it can be just fun games, but people should play. It is very important for the physical body and the brain to develop. Only if this happens, you will develop a humanity that is competent.
It is very important that at least 15–20 percent of the time in schools is spent on sport. A lot more can be taught to a child by making them playful than just making them sit in a classroom. The government has already announced a policy that in all government schools, only 50 percent of the time will be for academics; the rest will be for sport, art, music, craft and other activities. But implementing it will take time because facilitating equipment and training will take a long time. But at least, they have taken the first step.
Another reason we are not a sporting nation is that we have excluded the rural youth from sports. They do not have anything to play. They do not have football stadiums, boxing rings or anything. Without taking sport to villages, India will never be a sporting nation. The 65% of India in the ruralscape has to be involved. Towards this, Isha is conducting Gramotsavam where thousands of villages participate in sport. I request all our senior sportspersons, who have passed their professional sporting life, to help take this to the whole nation and bring sport into rural India.
Another aspect is that there is no ecosystem for most professional sports to rise in India. If you aspire to become a cricketer, there are many IPL teams, plus many other professional teams. At some level, you could play. But there is no such ecosystem for other sports yet. If you want to play football in Coimbatore city, there is no district or village level competition. So, there is really no opportunity. Only when there are many tiers of play, everyone will get to play at some competitive level. That does not exist in India right now. At the same time, it is great to see that we are building more infrastructure and more private companies are rewarding successful athletes. This is a very encouraging trend.
If we want to build a great nation, the most fundamental thing is that we build able-bodied youth in our society. Sport and sporting infrastructure are vital in making this happen.
(Sadhguru is a Yogi, mystic, visionary and a New York Times bestselling author. He is also the founder of Conscious Planet – Save Soil)
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