Improving economy with sports..!

How to improve national economy and reduce expenses on health budget with investment in sports..!

Respected Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif Sahab,

اسلام و علیکم

Sir,

The subject mentioned article is submitted for your personal kind perusal and is based on an old maxim quoted as below:

“The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”.
(i) The British were given to believe the real reason which tipped the balance in their favour in wars was the superior character of its young men built in boarding schools while playing games like cricket.

(ii) Eton was one of the famous English boarding schools that trained English boys for careers in the military, civil service and the church. (DAANISH Schools of the Punjab Government are a great example of a visionary project to turn around the fortunes of the future generations of Pakistan).

(iii) Famous public schools saw team sports like cricket not just as outdoor play, but as an organised way of teaching English boys, the discipline, the importance of hierarchy, the skills, the codes of honour and the leadership qualities that helped them build and run the British Empire.

(iv) Through the game of cricket-the ideal that cricket was played not for victory or profit but for its own sake, in the spirit of fair play, the British imperialists sought to justify their conquests and glorify the self image of English elite as “unselfish acts”.

(v) Though it suited the English ruling class to believe that it was the superior character of its young men built on playing fields that tipped the balance, the Napoleanic wars were won due to the economic resources of England. It was progress in trade and industry which made England, the world’s greatest power.

As such, a humble effort is made with the subject mentioned article reproduced below, to raise this nation’s full economic potential in trade and industry, through a physically super-fit Pakistani population, which must collectively believe in the saying “healthy body healthy mind’.

Last but not the least, we have to consider the 200 million population of Pakistan, as a huge manpower asset of this planet, which needs to channelise its positive energy into specific future goals, set by the nation’s visionary leadership. The national leadership must also determine, how to achieve these goals.

ARTICLE.

It is no secret that how politics coupled with corruption, has spoiled the sports in the country, which has earned the DUBIOUS distinction of the worlds BIGGEST nation, NOT to have earned a single medal in the Olympics, since the year 1994. While, much smaller and poorer countries like Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Kenya, have proved that winning medals at international level is just a matter of commitment, dedication and simple hard work, sans politics.

In the past, luckily our cricket, hockey, squash and some other sporting teams and players have been bringing laurels for Pakistan; with very little money, extremely small size governing boards and minimal politics.

Gradually, the foundations of key sports in Pakistan were eaten up by the greed of money, rampant corruption, nepotism, politics and incompetencies of the successive governments, sports managers and the players combined.

If, we have to put the sports in Pakistan back on the right track, two basic things are necessary.

Firstly, a vision and secondly, visionary and totally focused sports leadership, to put Pakistan back on top, at the worlds’ sports map.

As far as, the vision is concerned, nothing ever said about sports can match the following quote of Mr. Nelson Mandela, “Sport has the power to change the world…it has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than government in breaking down racial barriers.”

Now, taking a cue from the above mentioned statement of Mr. Nelson Mandela, it is suggested that Pakistani government should slightly re-phrase it and declare the following as its VISION statement:

“Sports has the power to change Pakistan…it has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite Pakistani people in a way that little else does. It speaks to the Pakistani youth in a language they understand. Sports can create hope for the entire Pakistani nation, where once there was only despair, lawlessness, hunger, unemployment, poverty, drugs, suicide bombings and alarming increase of suicides due to the economic hardships. It is more powerful than government in breaking down the menace of terrorism which has blown the country to the smithereens.”

Moreover, sports raised in the country on modern and scientific lines can be one of the biggest economic sector; providing employment, reducing poverty and drastically improving public health and fitness levels.

Under an sports advisor to the Prime Minister, we need to have a Pakistan Sports Commission (PSC) responsible for central planning under the banner میرا پاکستان sports system.

Under the this system, Pakistan will root out talented young children and put them in special academies from as young as four years old. If they are able to progress, athletes who make the cut should be put into a relentless training programme, filled with targets they must regularly hit, and paid by the government a monthly wage of Rs.60,000/-

Each year, the best athletes should then be sent to national training centres to be established at all the provincial capitals, where they will compete to enter Pakistan’s national team.

If they will succeed, they will move with their families into these training centres and live there all year round. These centres will train the sportspersons having the following mission statement:

“There will be no breakthrough without the hardest hardship. You cannot be a champion without going through the ultimate pressure”.

For as long as they will be successful, the national team members will benefit from perks including air tickets for their parents to watch them compete and, in some cases, sponsorship deals.

Sportspersons who will win medals in international competitions, or with national titles, can attend university after their career ends, with the tuition fee paid for, by the government.

The Pakistan Sports Commission (PSC) should have three units under the Advisor on Sports to the PM, namely the administrative departments, sport competition management centres, and other support and services institutions.

The PSC will be closely tied with All Sports Federations of Pakistan and the Pakistan Olympic Committee (POA). Besides forming strategies for sport development, overseeing their implementation, and developing mid- and long-range sport development plans, the PSC will be responsible for 9 number of functions as detailed below:

1. Creating a national sport framework

2. Promoting physical activity and exercise participation in schools and local and regional communities

3. Organising national sporting events

4. Organising international sport events in Pakistan.

5. Enforcing antidrug and anticompetitive measures.

6. Supporting research into the development of sports.

7. Implementing regulations governing the sport industry, sport market, and sport-related business activities.

8. Implementing national physical training standards and supervising public health in coordination with the Ministry of Health.

9. Overseeing sport activities with foreign associations and teams, and sport-related cooperation and communication with foreign countries.

To fulfill the nation’s Olympic strategies and ambition, the PSC and sport authorities at the provincial level will play a key role in promoting sport development in Pakistan.

One of the strategies should be the sponsorship of the Pakistan National Games (PNG), modelled after the modern Olympic Games; the PNG will be the largest and most important sport extravaganza in Pakistan. Each province-level administrative unit should send a team to compete in the PNG. The preparation for and competition at the PNG will allow the government to cultivate elite Pakistani athletes for major world competitions.

The essence of Pakistani Olympic strategies and ambition will be a unique system of selecting and training elite athletes.

Pakistan will become one of the few countries in the world that dedicate and use spare-time sport schools extensively to train and prepare future elite athletes. A spare-time sport school will be a boarding school specialized in sport and established to train Olympic hopefuls. Students will be selected for their athletic talent. They will take academic classes in the morning and engage in rigorous sport training sessions in the afternoon. These sport schools will serve as a reserve pool for elite sport teams at the provincial and national levels.

The Sports Law of Pakistan should became effective within six months of the formation of the PSC, becoming the first fundamental legal document for sport.

The Sports Law will establish the main tasks and key principles in managing the sport industry, confirming the importance of mass sport, and identifying the duties and responsibilities of sport-related organizations.

Essentially, the law will set the framework for the development of modern sport in Pakistan. The enactment of the law will signify that the sport industry in Pakistan has entered a new era under the protection of the country’s legal system.

Based on the Sports Law, local governments at provincial and city levels will have the right and authority to make their own rules for managing sport within their jurisdictions.

The Plan for Olympic Glories should also be released by the PSC within six months of its formation. The plan should outline three goals:

(a) restructuring the system in elite sport training and management.

(b) enhancing the elite athlete delivery pipeline and system (including sport schools).

(c) endeavours to maintain the nation’s leading position in world sport competitions.

The PSC should also promulgate the guidelines for a national fitness program. The guidelines should be drafted with the aim of improving the health and the overall physical condition of the general population.

The guidelines will encourage everyone, especially children and adolescence, to engage in at least one sporting activity every day, learn at least two ways of keeping fit, and have a health examination every year.

The aim will be that by 2020 about 40 percent of Pakistan’s population would be regularly participating in physical activity and that clear improvement would take place in the physical fitness level of Pakistani citizens.

In this modern era sports needs professionalisation which will lead to commercialisation; this means that sports associations become profit-making entities and that there will be a club system and professional sports leagues will also be formed. Sports clubs operations will cover ticket sales, advertising, club transfers, commercial matches, and television broadcasting.

This will open for world wide sports playing and related job opportunities for Pakistani sportspersons.

Best Regards,

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad