Q.Discuss the developmental process of the first professional institution of physical education after independence.

After Independence in 1947, the Government of India built up Physical Education through a sequence of committees, institutions and schemes, each filling a gap the one before it had identified.

It began with two committees. The Central Government Physical Education Committee, better known as the Tara Chand Committee (1948), recommended setting up a Central Institute of Physical Education and Recreation and improving the standard of games and sports in the country. Two years later, the Central Advisory Board of Physical Education (1950) was formed to advise the government on PE issues - one of its key objectives was making Physical Education a compulsory subject at the elementary, middle and senior-secondary levels, and in 1956 it produced the National Plan of Physical Education and Recreation, the same plan whose definition of the aim of Physical Education the chapter quotes directly.

Institution-building followed. India hosting the first Asian Games in New Delhi (1951) motivated Indian youth toward international competition. Health minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur's Coaching Scheme (1953) - launched because India had no professional coaching programme at the time - led to the National Institute of Sports (NIS) at Moti Bagh, Patiala (1961), still India's premier coach-training institute. The All India Council of Sports (1954) was set up to liaise between the government and National Sports Federations on financial matters, and it in turn established State and District Sports Councils. On the academic side, the Lakshmibai College of Physical Education (LCPE), Gwalior (1957) was India's first college of Physical Education; it became the Lakshmibai National College of Physical Education (LNCPE) in 1973, and a Deemed University - LNIPE - in 1995. …