Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India’s sports budget has usually been a talking point after a medal table is published. This week it was decided before one. The Union Cabinet has approved a revamped Khelo India Scheme together with enhanced Assistance to National Sports Federations, with a combined outlay of ₹36,441 crore for 2026–27 to 2030–31 — nearly eight times the size of the previous Khelo India scheme.
The money splits into ₹29,054 crore for Khelo India itself and ₹7,387 crore for assistance to national sports federations over the five years. The scheme design adds two new institutional layers — Khelo India Feeder Schools and Utkrishta Vidyalayas — and expands the athlete pool close to ten-fold through an Emerging Khelo India Athletes category. The federation support line is the less visible half and arguably the more consequential: it funds coaching, sports science, modern equipment, international exposure, training camps, foreign experts and participation in major competitions, which is the recurring expenditure that determines whether a talented sixteen-year-old is still improving at twenty-two.
School to podium, in one framework: feeder schools and Utkrishta Vidyalayas are added alongside a near ten-fold widening of the funded athlete pool.
Medals are won in a fortnight and built over a decade. A five-year outlay is the first honest unit of measurement India’s sports system has been given.
At a Glance
• Total outlay: ₹36,441 crore for 2026–27 to 2030–31
• Split: ₹29,054 crore Khelo India; ₹7,387 crore assistance to national sports federations
• Scale: nearly eight times the previous Khelo India scheme
• New structures: Khelo India Feeder Schools and Utkrishta Vidyalayas
• Athlete pool: widened close to ten-fold via the Emerging Khelo India Athletes category
• Federation support covers: coaching, sports science, equipment, foreign experts, international exposure, camps
• Stated goal: a continuous pathway from school sport to the Olympic podium
The structural problem this is aimed at is well known to anyone who has followed Indian sport closely. India has never lacked talent identification; school and district competition throws up thousands of promising athletes every year. What it has lacked is retention — the years between selection and senior competition, when an athlete needs consistent coaching, medical support, nutrition, injury management and enough competitive exposure to keep improving, and when the absence of any one of those quietly ends a career. Feeder schools and residential Utkrishta Vidyalayas address that gap directly by keeping education and training in the same place, which removes the choice between a degree and a sport that has cost India more athletes than any injury.
Two things will determine whether the outlay converts into results, and both are administrative rather than financial. The first is predictability: coaching contracts, camp calendars and equipment purchases work on annual cycles, and a five-year approval only helps if the money reaches federations early in the year rather than late. The second is measurement. A near ten-fold expansion of the funded athlete pool is the right ambition, but it makes tracking harder, and a scheme of this size deserves a public dashboard showing how many funded athletes progress from one level to the next each year. That single number — progression, not participation — is what would tell the country in 2029 whether ₹36,441 crore built a system or a spreadsheet. On the evidence from Glasgow this week, the raw material is not in doubt.
