Saifullah Khan was a self-confessed 바카라bully바카라 in his teenage years, often getting into physical violence to show off his masculinity. 바카라I was an aggressive and deviant teenager with severe anger issues바카라bullying other students, often getting into physical violence and not giving much heed to what my family or teachers used to say,바카라 Khan, 24, says. That was until he discovered rugby, till then an alien game to most north Indians, played by strapping White men and occasionally by the hero of a Bollywood flick (remember Shahrukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge). The sport changed Khan바카라s outlook towards life. 바카라I never knew the cure of all these complexities could ever be a game of rugby,바카라 he tells Outlook. And it바카라s through rugby that Khan is changing the lives of people living in urban slums in Delhi바카라s Shaheen Bagh area; Khan runs an NGO called Yellow Streets.
NGOs Show The Way As India Leads World Rugby In Sustainable Development
Rugby India has been able to spread the game far and wide. Women have taken to the sport more than men as NGOs keep changing the lives of the downtrodden
India has embraced rugby, once considered an elite sport, to emerge as the world number 1, surpassing Japan in terms of the game바카라s reach at the grassroots level. In a country where cricket is a religion and football has its fair share of followers, rugby바카라s penetration presents a wonderful story. For those who play the game, rugby is a metaphor for life itself바카라like most sports, it has the ability to channelise anger, grief and pain into positive energy. Sporting success can easily be quantified but when sport plays a role of a life-changer, the measure is very different. And how this vigorous sport is making a powerful impact on the lives of the downtrodden has made the world sit up and take notice.
World Rugby바카라s data for 2019 puts India at the top of the global rankings바카라the number of rugby players has risen from just over one lakh in 2016 to 2.1 lakh in 2019. The number of women taking to the sport has grown by 141 per cent in the same period. Women바카라s rugby started in India only in 2009. Today, the sport is played in 26 states and over 275 districts in India. There are close to 80,000 players in competitive rugby across the country. It is not only the big cities like Mumbai or Calcutta, but Tier 2 and 3 cities are also discovering the wonderful world of rugby. Sweety Kumari, 19, of Patna is now the face of Indian rugby, recently winning World Rugby바카라s International Young Player of the Year Award within three years of adopting the sport. Sweety, the third youngest among six siblings, started her career as an athlete but now she is described as Asia바카라s fastest player, her explosive pace and power helping her to become the top scorer in five of India바카라s latest international tournaments.
바카라The response to the GIR programme has been overwhelming, especially with respect to age-grade participation from across the country. The growing numbers, particularly in the women바카라s game, have ensured we establish a structured pathway for these young players to continue to be involved in the game,바카라 says Nasser Hussain, CEO of Rugby India. It바카라s because of the wide reach that national teams today comprise of players from rural India. The Indian women바카라s team includes players from the tribal belts of Odisha and West Bengal. Their success has also been acknowledged by PM Narendra Modi in one of his Mann Ki Baat radion talks.
The contribution made by NGOs and institutions like Future Hope and Jungle Crows (in Calcutta), the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (Bhubaneswar), Magician and Ace Foundations (Mumbai) and Yellow Streets (Delhi) have been significant. Their ability to change lives by using rugby as a sustainable development tool has been appreciated worldwide.
A former international officer with HSBC, it was Tim Grandage who first saw the fire in the eyes of children in the slums of Calcutta. Grandage initially raised a few of them at his home. Being British, he used rugby as a catalyst to translate their negative internal energies into something positive. Thus was born Future Hope. Grandage received the IRB Spirit of Rugby Award in 2001 and was rewarded by Prime Minister Modi in 2016 for his amazing work with the disadvantaged. Another Briton, Paul Walsh, gave up his job as a diplomat to script one of the fascinating stories of Indian rugby (see box).
In the past year, Saifullah and Yusra Khan바카라s Yellow Streets has worked with 100 street children and have trained them in professional rugby and skill building. Twenty five adolescent and youth leaders, collectively undergo skills of self-awareness and development, entrepreneurial abilities, team coherence and coaching skills. But it바카라s the young girls like Pinky who are the real-life heroes. A class IX student living under a flyover in Sarita Vihar, Pinky has countered neglect, violence and abuse by venting her frustration and hostility on the rugby pitch.
India women바카라s team captain Vahbiz Bharucha.
Pinky바카라s elder sister, Billo is 20 and mother of a two-year-old infant. As a young girl, she was forced to work as a domestic help and later worked as a bonded labour. This impacted her mental and physical health. Within six months of adopting rugby, she found her confidence back, says Yusra. 바카라Billo can now handle domestic violence herself by showing the guts to walk into a police station.바카라 It was a dream come true for 12-year-old Kishan, who was among 12 underprivileged boys participating in the Rugby World Cup in Japan last year. Kishan바카라s journey from the shanties of Delhi to Yokohama will soon be featured as one of the key celebrated milestones of Societe Generale, the company that works closely with rugby globally.