Did you notice we have come a long way and yet are stuck in the same space? Yes, we have moved from complaining about lack of sports facilities to moaning about how children are not playing enough sport these days. Such a shift has not helped India at all, has it?
A lack of movement and the thrust on scholastics has raised concerns about the growing incidence of a range of lifestyle disease, not the least being obesity among the school children. We have heard a number of complaints about inadequate infrastructure, imbalance between study and play, lack of interest among children, inadequate trained manpower to inspire children to play sport.
Come to think of it, we have been drowned by the litany and the cacophony.
Get Kids to Play jointly authored by Vijay Krishnamurthy and Saumil Majmudar, takes the conversation away from this and offered some solutions to the vexed questions. From being observers and researchers, they have chosen to be solution-providers, seeding positive thoughts that can bring about changes in the sports ecosystem in Indian schools.
With parents and educators at the back of their mind, Vijay and Saumil have designed their effort like the Swiss-knife, a companion and trusted tool of adventurers. They have organised and articulated their thoughts in five aspects – Space, Time, Child, Content and Facilitator to ensure that the reader does not need a start-to-finish effort to grasp their ideas.
Get Kids to Play could have easily slipped into an academic book but Vijay and Saumil resisted the temptation to take the easy way out. Instead, with the idea of making an impact on a larger constituency, they have crafted a book that does not even remotely seem like an academic effort. Their penchant for research has entwined with experiential stories to keep the reader interested.
If there is one grouse that I have with Vijay and Saumil’s thoughtful creation, it has to do with the difficulty in reading the text in many of the graphics that accompany their narration. I do appreciate the immense work put in the production of the book, but this aspect came across as the odd tool in the Swiss-knife that needs a lot of effort to access and open before it can be used.
In his foreword, former India men’s cricket team captain Rahul Dravid, now Head Coach of the men’s side, touches upon the virtually non-existent story of kids breaking window panes on the neighbourhood and the rising obesity. And, you can visualise the stark reality that has been staring is in our faces and presents the coming generations of Indians with great health challenges.
The book holds out warnings but also offers help to make school sports the custodian of India’s general mental and physical health in the coming years. It could not have come a day sooner, given the challenges that the young population is facing – low preferences for active transportation (walk or bicycling) and sedentary behaviour coupled with increasing screen time.
Things have come to such a pass that India’s thought leaders have had to conceive movements that promote physical literacy and fitness to eventually improve health of society at large. Get Kids to Play can be that ready reckoner that everyone can reach out to and find smart and practical solutions. The book can help India move a long way away from moaning and groaning.
Get Kids to Play, Vijay Krishnamurthy and Saumil Majmudar, Notion Press, pp194, Rs 495.
