When young athletes travel beside train toilet, Khelo India bleeds |
There are moments when a nation does not fail because of war or calamity, but because of indifference. Odisha is witness to one such moment.
Viral videos show that young athletes, who carried Odisha’s name at the National Under-17 Boys and Girls Wrestling Championship in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, were forced to travel sitting on the floor, cramped beside a train toilet, in freezing cold conditions on their way back to Bhubaneswar. There were 18 young wrestlers — 10 boys and 8 girls —accompanied by four teachers from different schools across Odisha.
It is further learnt that the young wrestlers had to endure similar hardships during their train journey to Ballia as well, even before they stepped onto the mats to compete in the championship.
This was not an unfortunate coincidence. Rather, it was a case of systemic neglect. The disturbing visuals are not merely a travel inconvenience caught on camera; in fact, they are an indictment of a system that celebrates sports in speeches but abandons athletes in practice. In those frames, the promise of Indian sports stand humiliated. This is precisely why the incident hurts deeper.
Because Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Khelo India vision was built to end exactly this kind of neglect. Khelo India was never just a scheme. Rather, it was a civilisational correction. Khelo India, which aims at improving India’s sports culture, sought to move Indian sports away from elite entitlement to grassroots empowerment to ensure that talent from small towns and modest families is respected, supported, and protected. From infrastructure to scholarships, from talent identification to athlete dignity,........