Government plans to encourage youth to take up sports in North-East region

NEW DELHI: Villagers living on India’s borders will be encouraged to take up sports like boxing, archery, shooting and martial arts, especially in the North-East to wean them away from extremism, while Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan will also be taken to villages in all 106 border districts. The home ministry has revised the guidelines for its Rs 990-crore Border Area Development Programme (BADP) for 2015-16, specifying that minimum of 5% of the funds must be spent by the states on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan by constructing toilets for ladies in rural areas and another 5% of the funds have to be spent on building sports infrastructure in border villages for boxing, archery, shooting and martial arts.

“The idea is inspired from the success of sports icons of the North-East like Mary Kom. 40% of the total allocation under BADP has now been reserved for the eight north-eastern states. We want to wean away N-E youth from extremism to sports,” a senior ministry official told ET. The new guidelines say: “Border Guarding Forces (BGFs) shall encourage sports activities among youths in border villages.

The BGFs shall provide platform and coaches and groom children under the sports sector.” Villages falling under 0-50 kilometres of the border will be considered for development under BADP now with the villages identified by BGFs within 10 kilometres of the International Border getting uppermost priority and being designated as ‘strategic villages’, as per the revised policy. The new plan will also ensure the convergence and dovetailing of various central/state schemes with the BADP. “Various infrastructure schemes may be dovetailed with MNREGA so as to have more coverage of projects taken up under BADP.

All out effort must be made to take up those projects on topmost priority which are not covered under any scheme of Centre or state,” the revised policy says.