Welfare and support schemes for sportspersons

Welfare and support schemes for sportspersons

‘Sports’ being a State subject the responsibility for providing sports  infrastructure and training rests with the State Government. The Central Government  supplements the efforts of the State Government. Further, the Government has undertaken a  series of measures to address the challenges faced by sportspersons and coaches/trainers, aimed  at enhancing their financial security, training infrastructure, and mental wellness support  through various schemes/programmes of this Ministry such as:

To provide mental wellness support to sportspersons, sport psychologists and mental trainers  are engaged at both national team and individual levels. Presence of a sports psychologist,  including High-Performance Analyst (Psychology) or Performance Analyst (Psychology) is  ensured at the National Centres of Excellence (NCoE) of SAI. These sports psychologists are  responsible for helping the athletes with the mental training pertaining to optimal performance,  as well as enabling them to achieve emotional wellbeing also.

Further the Government has recently announced Khelo Bharat Niti-2025 which also, inter-alia, has provisions to address the challenges being faced by the sportspersons and the  coaches/trainers.

The Government has adopted a series of measures to ensure the timely and transparent  disbursal of financial assistance and incentives to sportspersons/coaches under various  schemes. Key measures among these is the implementation of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)  mechanism for disbursement and online portals to digitize the process of inviting applications,  thus ensuring the timely and efficient disbursement of financial assistance/incentives to  beneficiaries. Under this system, financial assistance/support is directly transferred into the  bank accounts of the sportspersons/coaches thereby eliminating delays, reduces administrative  bottlenecks, and ensures that the benefits reach the intended beneficiaries in a timely and  efficient manner.

This information was given by the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, Dr Mansukh Mandaviya in written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.