Openomics 2026: Ahead of the Game

 IT WAS IN 2018 when a 16-year-old Manu Bhaker first grabbed the attention of the sporting fraternity. Making her debut at the ISSF World Cup, a little less than two years since she had first picked up shooting as a sport, and competing against much more experi­enced shooters in the 10-metre air pistol category, she calmly shot her way to a gold. Bhaker was beginning to make a name for herself in the national circuit, but it was this performance that first had everyone sit up and take notice.

While everyone gushed over the per­formance, the first thoughts of the fam­ily turned towards more matter-of-fact concerns. Perhaps this performance will help bring some sponsorship her way, they thought, and make shooting more financially viable. Choosing sport over a conventional career is always a risky choice to make. And shooting, with the high costs involved, can be particularly daunting. “She [Bhaker] is always asking questions about the sport… She is not in the TOPS scheme,” Jaspal Rana, the national pistol coach who had groomed her, had told the Indian Express then, re­ferring to the government-funded Target Olympic Podium Scheme which provides financial and logistical support to elite athletes with high medal potential for the Olympics and Paralympics. “But we need to groom talented shooters like her for the 2020 Olympics.”

Bhaker would make it to the 2020 event, where her Olympics dream would shatter disastrously. But it would be in the next edition, at Paris, where she would shine, making history as the first Indian to win two medals in a single Olympic Games.

An athlete’s journey to glory is no­body’s but her own. But what did play a contributing role, helping Bhaker bridge the gap between promise and its fulfil­ment, was the support the government provided. She was one of the early ben­eficiaries of the Khelo India programme, the initiative to revive sporting culture at the country’s grassroots level. At an event before heading to the Paris Olym­pics, Bhaker would tell Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “Khelo India and TOPS played a very major role for me. Wher­ever I am today, the support from it has been a big part.” She would point out how her exploits in the inaugural Khelo India School Games in 2018 (renamed as Khelo India Youth Games), where she had won a gold, led to her being part of the TOPS core group and securing sup­port from it.

It isn’t just Bhaker. Out of the 117 In­dian athletes who made it to the Paris Olympics, as many as 28 of them were part of the Khelo India ecosystem. Even back in the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023, there were 124 Khelo India athletes in the Indian contingent, contributing as many as 41 out of the total 107 medals that India won that year.

The Khelo India programme isn’t without faults. There have been com­plaints about shoddy planning and the quality of the competition during the games have sometimes been criticised, and some sport bodies has even raised concerns about unequal fund distribu­tion, but it has, in the eight years of its existence, given the sporting ecosystem in the country a considerable push.

Nirmala Sitharaman is now giving the programme a larger canvas. Positioning sport as a key area of long-term national development, Sitharaman in her Budget speech expanded the scope of the pro­gramme into the Khelo India Mission. “Taking forward the systematic nurtur­ing of sport talent which is set in motion through the Khelo India programme, I propose to launch a Khelo India Mission to transform the sport sector over the next decade,” she said in her speech. In her tell­ing, the mission will now move beyond talent identification. Over the next 10 years, an integrated talent development pathway will come up, she said, one that is supported by training centres (catering to foundational, intermediate and elite ath­letes), where sport science and technology is integrated, coaches and support staff receive systematic development, sport infrastructure is enhanced, and there are competitions and leagues that lead to the promotion of a sporting culture. These are lofty ideas, and much will eventually depend upon implementation.

But from the government’s end, Sitharaman announced, an allocation of ₹4,479.88 crore will be made for the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, which marks ₹685.58 crore over the pre­vious year’s outlay of ₹3,794.30 crore. The rise translates to an increase of around 18 per cent, and is much more if one con­siders the revised estimate of that year (₹3,346.54 crore).

Every government has been allocating larger sums for sport over the years. And this has become particularly so in the last few years. It is understandable why such a concerted push is being made. Not only are some big competitions taking place this year—there is the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, followed by the Asian Games in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture—but, more crucially, India will be hosting the Commonwealth Games four years down the line, followed by, if the country’s bid goes through, the Olympic Games in 2036. If India is to put on a spectacular show and have a large crop of Indian ath­letes on the podium in those games, it is absolutely necessary that the foundation for those goals is laid down now.

The allocation for sport interestingly came with an unexpected push for the domestic sport goods manufacturing sector. The Budget sets aside ₹500 crore for its promotion. “India has the potential to emerge as a global hub for high-quality, affordable sports goods,” Sitharaman said during her speech. “I propose a dedi­cated initiative for sports goods that will promote manufacturing, research and innovation in equipment design as well as material sciences.”

THE SPORT GOODS manufactur­ing industry in India is a tiny one. Located primarily in Jalandhar in Punjab and Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, where a number of small and large firms churn out various types of sporting equipment, it is estimated to have less than 1 per cent of the international market.

Rakesh Kohli, the chairman of STAG International, a manufacturer of table tennis equipment, told a publication after the Budget’s announcement, “This is the first time that the government has come out with some kind of suggestions or subsidies or incentives for the sports manufacturing industry… It’s a very posi­tive development… They are also talking about setting up clusters for sporting goods manufacturing. So, all this is go­ing to be quite helpful.” Pointing out how this industry has now been put under the ambit of the sports ministry, and how there are multiple discussions going on with the government over building In­dian sport brands, he said, “That is where we wanted the support… The sports min­istry has put forward a lot of proposals to the government after discussion with manufacturers.”

Much of the success of the plans put forth to promote sport will depend upon how it is implemented. But by putting in place an ambitious mission, where the development of sporting talent will be tied in with an all-round development of the larger ecosystem around it, includ­ing efforts to boost the domestic sporting goods industry, the Budget takes big steps towards reshaping how the country looks at sport.