You cannot blame it on insurgents all the time. Sometimes, reasons can go beyond just lack of resources or even lack of interest when it comes to promoting sports in insurgency-affected regions of the State.
Despite State Government’s plan to promote sports in all insurgency ridden districts, there are still four districts where summer sports training camps could not be held this time round. As regards the rest, official sources say, the results had been far from encouraging as it was summer holiday time and many tribal youth were just not keen to attend the camps.
The reasons behind not holding the camps turned out to be lack of officials for holding the camps and non existent sports management machinery rather than insurgents creating problems in the districts of Narayanpur , Bijapur, Sukma and Kondagaon. In Bijapur, the sports officer had just been appointed while Narayanpur a sports officer is yet to be appointed.The other two districts—Kondagaon and Sukma being new districts, the Government is yet to establish a machinery for sports administration in the two districts.
However, going by the overall scenario in the context of interest displayed by the tribals in participating in the training camps, only a third of the tribal youth in other tribal dominated districts attended the summer training camps compared to the urban pockets where the number of participation was in the range of 1,000 to 2000. The Sports Department has set a target of bringing in atleast 2,000 participants in every summer training camp this time round. However, sources informed that barely 500 youth participated in the camps organised this time round in the tribal dominated districts. The Government had also arranged for nutritious meal, T shirts and also a certificate to be given to each participant at the end of the training camps to encourage the tribal youth to participate in the training camps.
The officials of some of the districts have maintained that the lack of sufficient participants of the youth in the training camps was on account of summer holidays when the students visit home. In other tribal dominated districts stated that children do not attend the summer camps when they are far from their home. There had been some participation of youth in Jagdalpur for the training camps. There was less interest shown by the youth in the villages surrounding the district.