Special Area Games Scheme
Scheme of Government of India / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Special Area Games Scheme (also known as the Special Area Games Programme; abbreviated to SAG Scheme and SAG Programme or SAGP) is a sports promotion scheme of the Sports Authority of India (SAI) that is designed to identify and train sports persons from the communities in the tribal, rural, hilly and coastal regions of the country who are considered to exhibit natural physical aptitude for sporting events. The programme was started in 1986 by the Department of Youth Affairs and Sports of the Government of India but was suspended six years later in 1993 and was not resumed until 2014.
Before being admitted to one of the twenty SAG Centres, a selected trainee is required to go through the preliminary selection and an assessment by the field experts at special coaching camps. Under the scheme, various population groups have been scouted for their innate sporting talent. Its first project, which was launched in November 1986 to find contestants for archery among the communities of traditional hunters was successful; within a year of commencement, nine of the top-ten archers of India were the discoveries of this project. The programme attracted criticism for being focused exclusively on those population groups that were considered to have a natural advantage over others.
The scheme covers 26 sporting disciplines; except for kabaddi, netball, sepaktakraw and wushu, these are Olympic sports. Selected trainees are trained at the SAG Sports Centres; these facilities were developed after SAI consulted with the state governments where they are located. Assam, Bihar, Kerala, Manipur and Odisha each have two of these centres.