Campaign to spot 038; groomsporting talent in the works

Kya aap saat feet lambe hein?,Kya aap doosre Gagan Narang banna chahte hein?,or Hamare desh ko aapki zaroorat hai bhejiye apne video aur details.

Kya aap saat feet lambe hein?,Kya aap doosre Gagan Narang banna chahte hein?,or Hamare desh ko aapki zaroorat hai bhejiye apne video aur details. This is what you may soon hear your favourite sportspersons ask you on TV,radio,YouTube and Facebook.

A major government campaign to inspire a new sporting culture in the country,find sporting talent and groom it,starting from schools,is in the works. Shaping the national Sports Connect programme are the likes of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar,former table tennis player Indu Puri and former hockey player Zafar Iqbal.

An inter-sectoral working group on IT-enabled Sports Connect,chaired by telecom minister Kapil Sibal and with secretaries from across ministries,besides the DG of the Sports Authority of India,representatives from the National Rifle Association of India and Wrestling Federation of India and sports expert Boria Majumdar,has roped in the sports icons to develop a range of online sports resources to generate interest in the sector.

Helped by the National Informatics Centre and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing,the group aims at setting up a National Portal for Promotion of Sports that will offer end-to-end information on all sport disciplines sports scholarships available,sports quota for admissions to courses and in job recruitment,and relevant eligibility criteria.

As recommended by the working group,a key part of the exercise will involve a nationwide talent hunt to identify and encourage budding talent at the grassroots. It will also look specifically at people with disabilities,with Indias athletes in the 2012 Paralympic Games having put up an impressive,promising performance.

On the cards also is an e-museum on sports,a virtual archive of achievements by Indian and international sportspersons,e-books,video archives and attractive statistics.

This portal will enable interactions with leading personalities through video-conferencing in all major sports complexes,popularise sports events through social media and SMS services,provide IT tools for personal use of budding sportspersons and assist needy sportspersons. It will use an Idolising the Idols mechanism to facilitate interactions between sports personalities and young enthusiasts.

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While the NIC will engage professional agencies to design and develop the portal and its content,the Ministry of Youth Affairs amp; Sports will build a framework for engagement with states and local institutions and to organise the national talent hunt across the rural belt in particular. The Ministry of Human Resource Development will attempt to integrate it with the schooling and university system to draw youngsters to sports.