Vision of Khelo India

The vision of the Government of India behind launching the Khelo India Programme is to further the sports culture in India, especially at the grassroots level, as well as to achieve sporting excellence in the country.

In other words, the vision operates at two levels at once: widening participation so that sport becomes a part of ordinary life across the country, and raising the standard of Indian sport so the nation can compete and win at the highest levels. A broad base of participation and a peak of excellence are treated as two sides of the same goal — a nation only discovers its genuinely talented athletes when large numbers of children get the chance to try sport in the first place, so lasting excellence cannot be built on a thin base of participation. Equally, mass participation alone does not automatically produce world-class athletes unless that talent, once spotted, is identified early and given structured support to grow.

Why this vision was needed

Khelo India was launched in the financial year 2017-2018 by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India, against a sobering backdrop: only around 5% of India's population was participating in sport and games at the time, even though the country was making steady progress at international sporting events. The vision statement responds directly to this gap. It refuses to treat "more medals" and "more participants" as two unrelated problems needing two unrelated solutions — it frames them as a single vision requiring one connected framework, so grassroots development and elite performance reinforce each other instead of competing for attention and funding.

The seriousness behind the vision is also reflected in how it was institutionalised: the Programme was approved by the Cabinet, Department of Sports, Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, on 20th September 2017, with a budget allocation of Rs. 1,756 crore for the period 2017-18 to 2019-20. A vision backed by a specific Cabinet approval date and a multi-year budget is meant to be read as a concrete national commitment, not a slogan.

The two pillars of the vision, in practice

• Grassroots sports culture — making sport a normal, everyday activity in schools, villages and communities, not an activity reserved for a talented few; pursued through play-field development, community coaching and school-level fitness assessment.
• Sporting excellence — once a wide base of participants exists, identifying genuinely talented players early and nurturing them systematically through academies, financial assistance and access to world-class training, so India becomes a stronger sporting nation internationally.

These two pillars are exactly what the Programme's twelve verticals (discussed later in this chapter — Play Field Development, Talent Search and Development, Support to Sports Academies, and so on) are designed to deliver on the ground: the vision is the "why", and the verticals are the "how".

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