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.
From the late 1950s onward the focus widened to fitness and talent: the Sports and Youth Welfare Department (1958), the National Physical Efficiency Drive (1959) to evaluate citizens' fitness, the National Fitness Corps (1965), and the Rural Sports Tournament Scheme and Sports Talent Search Scheme (1970-71) to find rural and state/national-level talent. The National Sports Championship for Women (1975) targeted women's participation specifically.
The 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi left India with major new sports infrastructure, and the Sports Authority of India (SAI) was created in 1984 specifically to maintain and properly utilise it, with the twin objectives of promoting sport and achieving sporting excellence. SNIPES merged into SAI in 1987. India hosted the XIX Commonwealth Games in 2010, and finally, in 2018, CBSE made Physical Education a compulsory subject for Classes IX-XII as part of mainstreaming Health and Physical Education - the same policy the chapter's opening Discussion box is built around.