This festive season, let’s ‘sportify India'!

Sushil Kumar (centre) with the team of IFS

Mandeep Kaur, Seema Punia, Jitu Rai, Abhishek Verma – would you recognize any of these names or manage to relate these names to any recent sporting event? Most of you probably wouldn’t.

Let’s try once more – Joginder Sharma, Wriddhiman Saha, Ashish Nehra and Unmukt Chand – could you manage to identify the names this time? Well, I am sure you did, maybe not with any of the recent events, but then they are popular names; they are cricketers.

But have you ever thought about the reason behind such discrimination? Have you ever imagined who is to be blamed for this? Well, the reason is the unconditional support and love given to cricketers, and it is “I” and “YOU” who has to be blamed for this.

For your information, Mandeep, Seema, Jitu and Abhishek are athletes who made a mountain of sacrifices just to ensure that the Indian flag was held high at the Asian Games, 2014. They are gold medalists, and they are our champions. Their target now is the Olympic gold.

But then there are many questions - is it really possible? How long will it take? Do we have talent and funding? What is the need of the hour?

India For Sports – the platform

To improve the condition of sports and athletes in India, the youth of the country has now stepped up. One example of a team of young people in their 20s working to uplift sports in India is ‘India For Sports.’

India for Sports (IFS) is a section 25 not-for-profit company registered under the Companies Act, 2013. Their mission is to help all Indian athletes have sufficient funding to prepare and participate in international as well as national sport events. They envision India as a top-performing country in every major international sports event.

IFS is India's first athlete-only crowd funding organization dedicated to providing a level playing field to the poor and deprived Indian athletes; the aim is to provide the kind of infrastructure that other athletes across the world enjoy.

Even in the 21st century, the idea of modern equipment and use of technology in sports seems too far-fetched for many athletes in India. Many of them do not even have access to adequate nutritious food.

There have been multiple studies done and articles reported, highlighting the issue. The IFS team has taken a pledge to support Indian athletes by raising funds to prepare and participate in every major national and international sport events.

How does ‘India For Sports’ support athletes?

At present, IFS is running four campaigns, i.e., raising funds for four Indian athletes – Arpinder Singh (bronze medalist, CWG 2014), Amit Dahiya (gold medalist, CWG 2014), Sharath Kamal (silver medalist, CWG 2014) and Inderjeet Singh (bronze medalist, Asian Games, 2014).

Apart from raising funds, IFS supports them by giving them visibility and arranging for their mental conditioning, nutrition and psychology sessions, among other things. These campaigns can be accessed on their website here.

Supporting the IFS

Indian athletes have always needed a platform like ‘India For Sports’ and with initiatives like these, Indian sports is only going to go up from here. There are many ways to pledge your support to IFS. But the three most important are the “three Cs” –

Communicate: spread the word via social media. Visit the ‘India For Sports’ Facebook and Twitter pages. Talk about the revolution that it is during your lunch or dinner meetings, at offices, at school / college, at home, etc. Talk about what it can do. Talk about Sportifying India.

Connect: If you are in touch with corporates who can provide sponsorship to India’s champion athletes as a part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity, do write in to them.

Contribute: Provide financial support, because cash is the king. If you believe in their cause and want to take India to the next level, to see the Indian flag held high, take it forward by making a small contribution. Research shows that even very small contributions can make a big difference when clubbed together.

Through this small step, IFS is trying to create a positive feedback loop, the effect of which will be huge in time to come. The path is really dark, but there sure is light at the end of the tunnel.