Creating more sports academies for individual sports, identifying 10 priority sports and making sports bodies more accountable are all part of the NITI Aayog’s 20-point draft action plan to improve India’s performance at the Olympics.

With India missing out in the recently concluded Rio Olympics, despite several near-perfect performances and returning with just two medals, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set up a task force to prepare an action-plan for the next three Olympics till 2028.

The draft action plan, which was released on Wednesday for public comments, is in line with the target set for the nation to be able to win 50 medals at the 2024 Summer Olympics.

For the short-term, the government’s think tank believes identifying 10 priority sports with high winning potential and developing an outcome-oriented action plan for each of these sports will be crucial. It has also suggested that sportspersons should be organised in three groups in accordance with the last four-year performances for each of these priority sports.

Explaining the reasons for identifying the priority sports, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said that countries such as Kenya and Jamaica participate in only two Olympics sports and yet get medal tally of 100 and 78 respectively. He said countries such as the UK have developed sports business plan to support high performance sports, improving their medal tally significantly since 1968 and India can learn from this.

Harnessing the potential of national sports talent, especially in tribal, rural and coastal areas, recruiting world class coaches and grading them according to performance and strengthening and scaling up existing Sports Authority of India (SAI) training centres are among the other recommendations.

NITI Aayog also believes that ethical practices and better governance structure are essential to make sports bodies more accountable and has recommended implementation of the Draft National Sports Development Bill to tackle issues such as carrying out anti-doping measures and prevention of fraud of age among others.

In a bid to clean up the sports management, it has also suggested annual performance review of sports bodies, infrastructure and sportspersons. Long-term action steps include concurrent focus on sports in schools and scouting talent and training them from a young age, besides developing sports infrastructure through public-private partnership. Another key recommendation to ensure sportspersons have access to consistent funds, is signing of fixed four-year contracts between SAI and sportsperson after each Olympics.

Kant said NITI Aayog which developed this action plan after 3-4 months of analysis is now seeking views from all stakeholders, including sportspersons, before finalising the recommendations.

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