From Team Satyamev Jayate
Satyamev Jayate opens its new season with the episode, "A ball can change the world." It’s not about how to win medals, but something a million times more ambitious - unleashing the power of sports to change our country.
The story of Magic Bus epitomizes this. This organization has used sports to transform the lives of lakhs of underprivileged kids and ensure that they remain in school, learn important life skills and finally be ready to take up dignified livelihoods. Matthew Spacie, the founder of Magic Bus, strongly believes that the key to solving the livelihood problem is to make youth employable through education and skills development. (Watch: Game Changers)
In Morena district of Madhya Pradesh, Ram Snehi saw a similar dream for the youth of the Bedia community. He set up an ashram for poor children where sports is a daily activity and the impact has been magical. (Watch: Empowering the Bedia Community Girls)
The key lies in providing every child with the opportunity to play. In a small village in Gujarat, a retired headmaster began teaching not just male but also female students to swim in the village pond. More than 400 children from this village have participated at state level competitions, and about 45 kids at the national level. (Watch: Swimming to Success)
Shubham Jaglan, the nine-year-old son of a humble farmer from Israna village in Panipat, has become the world champion in golf for his age group, winning more than a 100 titles within four years. Shubham was provided the key ingredient – opportunity – by Amit Luthra, India’s former golf champion through his organization Golf Foundation. Yes, our hearts fill with pride when our champions win medals, but more importantly, it is on playgrounds that you learn team work, concentration, discipline, commitment and patience. Sports is not a part of education, it is education itself. (Watch: Small Wonder)
Today thousands of boys are getting sucked into crime from an early age. Akhilesh Paul was enamoured and ensnared by this world as well until a football changed his life. Not only can sports direct youth towards the right direction, it is capable of smashing the wall of gender inequality and bring millions of girls from out of shadows into the light. There is no better proof than the story of the Phogat family which fought social discrimination in rural Haryana to give the country world class women wrestlers. (Watch: Rising from the Ashes) This was proven yet again in rural Jharkhand where an American idealist used football to change the destinies of tribal girls who are usually married off early and are hardly educated. (Watch: Girls, Unlimited)
Sports has the power to overcome each and every kind of disability as our blind cricketers have shown. (Watch: The Unsung T20 Champs) It can also help overcome our deepest caste divides as the Isha Foundation has proved in Tamil Nadu. It’s a magic pill not just for the young, but also the old. It can create wonders for a champion like Saina Nehwal as well as humble village women from Mahadwadi. (Watch: Beyond all Boundaries)
We as a people should become aware that sports cannot be viewed as a pastime or time pass. Sports can change us as a people. The Chinese economic growth story is closely connected to the government’s policy of encouraging mass sports which has catapulted it into the pinnacle of sports. In India, our sports federations which reek of corruption and nepotism are in desperate need of reform. (Watch: Kick In Reforms)These federations have to be run not by venal politicians and officials who bring shame to the country, but by sportspersons themselves. (Watch: Cleaning Up Our Sports Federations)