What India's National Sports Policy 2024 Gets Right — and What It Still Needs

India's draft National Sports Policy 2024 represents the government's most comprehensive vision statement on sport since the 2001 policy. It aspires to make sport a tool for nation-building, a driver of economic and social progress, and a daily habit for every Indian. Aligning with flagship programmes like Khelo India, the Fit India Movement, and the ambition to host the 2036 Olympics, the Policy addresses the full spectrum: grassroots talent identification, high-performance systems, sports infrastructure, sports science, CSR frameworks, and digital innovation.

AM Sports Law submitted formal comments to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports on October 27, 2024. The broad thrust of the Policy is commendable. The problem — as with so many Indian policy documents — is that vision is not the same as implementation. Our comments focused primarily on the gap between the two.

The Implementation Mechanism Gap

The most significant weakness in the Policy is the absence of actionable implementation mechanisms. The Policy articulates goals but does not specify targets, timelines, or accountability frameworks. Australia's Sport 2030 policy, which India could usefully benchmark, includes measurable goals — closing the gap in sports participation for Indigenous Australians, achieving gender parity in participation by 2030. Europe's Sports Policy sets concrete output timelines. These are not bureaucratic additions. They are what makes a policy document a plan of action rather than a statement of intent.

We recommended that the Policy introduce specific targets with attainable deadlines and a periodic reporting requirement — ministerial reports to Parliament on progress against defined metrics. Without these, there is no mechanism by which civil society, athletes, or the courts can hold the government accountable for non-delivery.

Alignment with Existing Schemes

The Policy aims to enhance sports education in schools and create linkages with the National Education Policy 2020. This alignment is correct and important. However, the Policy does not specify how it will coordinate with existing central schemes — TOPS, Khelo India, the Mission Olympics scheme — to avoid duplication and ensure additionality. A clear inter-ministerial coordination framework, with MYAS as lead ministry, needs to be built into the implementation architecture.

Athlete Welfare: The Missing Chapter

The Policy's athlete welfare provisions are underdeveloped. Elite athletes who exit sport at 30 or 35 face significant career transition challenges. The mental health pressures of elite competition are increasingly well-documented. Anti-doping education at the grassroots level remains inadequate. A comprehensive athlete welfare framework — covering career transition, mental health support, and anti-doping education — should be a central pillar of the Policy, not an afterthought.

The CSR Opportunity

India's CSR framework requires eligible companies to allocate 2% of average net profit to activities in Schedule VII of the Companies Act. Sport receives less than 1% of total CSR contributions. The Policy identifies this as an opportunity but offers no concrete mechanism to change the allocation. A dedicated sports CSR credit or matching grant scheme — similar to what exists in the arts sector in several jurisdictions — would materially shift corporate investment toward sport.

Conclusion

The National Sports Policy 2024 has the right instincts: athlete-centric, performance-driven, aligned with education and health, open to CSR and private participation. What it lacks is the engineering that makes ambition operational. The Ministry accepted public submissions for a reason — to make the policy better. We hope these recommendations contribute to producing a document that India's sporting ecosystem can actually be held accountable to.