Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Sports can be used to help national integration
The Reliance Foundation Youth Sports initiative claims to be India's largest multi-city school and university sports competition.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for the promotion of sports within India, saying that sport can be used to help national integration; alleviating ethnic, religious and gender issues.
Launching the Reliance Foundation Youth Sports (RFYS) initiative online - India’s largest multi-city school and university sports competition – PM Modi said young Indians should take to sports to become strong individuals.
“Sports should be an integral part of our everyday life. Some people think that sports is important only for physical well-being, I feel sports is important for overall development of an individual. We are a large and diverse nation. Sports can be a great means of national integration,” Modi said after interacting with young Indians via video-conferencing.
“From sports, we learn sportsman spirit and that acts as a lubricant in our social life. More than winning, sports helps you learn to deal with defeats.” he added.
The RFYS initiative is in alignment with the Indian government’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports’ vision of ‘Khelo India’. For the inaugural year, the RFYS initiative will run football competitions in eight cities across the country in four categories: Junior Boys, Senior Boys, Senior Girls and College Boys with participating teams across the four categories competing in city qualifiers across India beginning in August. This will be followed by city championships in October/November and national finals at the beginning of 2017.
The Reliance Foundation, the organisation running this initiative, will fund and develop sports programmes across the country. Additionally, they will create a talent scouting pool in all disciplines to provide scholarships to deserving young Indians. Nita Ambani, founder and chairperson of the Reliance Foundation said, “We are extremely honoured to have our Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to inaugurate and support the Reliance Foundation Youth Sports. RFYS aims to create a unified structure of school and college competitions across sports to promote participation of young athletes.
“It has been my dream to see India develop as a multi-sports nation. I truly believe that sports can develop the youth in our country and inculcate values of self-discipline, sportsmanship, team spirit, leadership, integrity as well as promote a healthy lifestyle.
“Our vision is to promote and encourage large participation across multi-sports discipline in over 50 plus cities by 2020 and create opportunities for youngsters to take up sports as a professional career,” she added.