The Nationwide Sports activities Governance Act 2025 marks a significant reform in India’s sports activities regulation, introducing new establishments and athlete illustration. Nonetheless, it overlooks important international finest practices on human rights, sustainability, fairness, and safeguarding. This piece argues for embedding built-in, people-centred “Good Governance Frameworks” to modernise India’s sports activities governance and internet hosting ambitions.
India’s sports activities governance panorama skilled a transformative second in the summertime of 2025 with the passage of the Nationwide Sports activities Governance Act 2025 (‘NSGA’), alongside the Nationwide Sports activities Coverage and the On-line Gaming Act. These reforms characterize an bold try to modernise sports activities governance, with a transparent purpose to safe internet hosting rights for the 2036 Summer time Olympics and Paralympics and different mega-sporting occasions together with the Commonwealth Video games 2030. The NSGA introduces commendable structural improvements such because the Nationwide Sports activities Board (‘NSB’) for regulatory oversight, the Nationwide Sports activities Tribunal for dispute decision, Sports activities Election Panel to supervise free and truthful elections to the game our bodies, and enhanced athlete illustration via the Athletes Committee (mentioned right here, right here, right here and right here). Nonetheless, it concurrently represents a missed alternative to include important rights-based concerns that outline international finest apply in sports activities governance.
NSGA’s failure to embed significant stakeholder ecosystem approaches, complete human rights protections, sustainability and environmental justice concerns, fairness and inclusion provisions, and sturdy safeguarding measures (collectively, ‘Good Governance Frameworks’) dangers positioning India’s sports activities governance framework as outdated even earlier than it has been carried out. This omission is especially hanging given India’s internet hosting ambitions and the worldwide sports activities neighborhood’s more and more stringent Good Governance necessities for main occasion hosts. On this piece, I’ll talk about why it is important for Indian sports activities legislation and coverage to embed these Good Governance Frameworks. Now that the NSGA is in operation, it’s incumbent upon the NSB (because the regulator) to deal with these shortcomings via its residuary powers underneath part 6 of the NSGA.
Ecosystem Engagement Strategy: Contemplating Pursuits and Voices of all Stakeholders
Up to date sports activities governance literature recognises that efficient regulation extends past athletes and directors to embody a complete ecosystem of stakeholders whose rights, pursuits and voices have to be thought-about in decision-making processes. The United Nations (‘UN’) Secretary-Common’s current report on sport and sustainable growth identifies a people-focused definition of stakeholders within the sports activities ecosystem that features athletes, followers, journalists, public and neighborhood members, volunteers, coaches and directors, employees, officers, and marginalised communities. Likewise, the Worldwide Olympic Committee’s (‘IOC’) Strategic Framework on Human Rights explicitly acknowledges the necessity to take into account the pursuits of employees, native communities, and different stakeholders past athletes.
Whereas the NSGA commendably prioritises athletes via inclusion of athlete voices in governance and makes provisions for contemplating athlete welfare, this imaginative and prescient fails to mirror the evolution of world sports activities governance debates over the previous decade. The human rights-focused, people-centred perspective of the game ecosystem reveals the big quantity and variety of organisations and folks that contribute to it of their completely different roles and capacities. Understanding these interconnected relationships is essential for figuring out the place dangers can come up and who wants safety underneath the legislation.
The NSGA’s oversight in failing to account for fan pursuits and rights is especially troublesome, provided that followers characterize the first customers {of professional} sport whose engagement in the end sustains the whole ecosystem. Indian sports activities followers have traditionally been handled abysmally with insufficient stadium services, poor crowd administration and poor occasion data being a typical a part of the expertise. The laws ought to have imposed obligations on sports activities our bodies and decision-makers to undertake significant fan engagement processes, recognising that sports activities governance impacts not solely the athletes and help workers but additionally tens of millions of individuals whose emotional and monetary help runs these sporting competitions.
It’s crucial that Indian sports activities governance undertake this wider stakeholder ecosystem engagement strategy that recognises the pursuits, rights and voices of the various people and communities related to sports activities and concurrently embed duties on decision-makers together with governments at numerous ranges, sport our bodies, federations, producers, suppliers and occasion organisers.
Human Rights-Based mostly Strategy: Of, by and for the Folks
Regardless of containing some rights-based provisions, significantly relating to athlete rights and welfare (sections 6(i), 9 and 12(4)), the NSGA basically fails to undertake a complete human rights-based strategy that has turn into normal throughout worldwide sports activities governing our bodies. Such an strategy emphasises the obligations of institutional actors as ‘duty-bearers’ and the capability of ‘rights-holders’ (on this case, athletes, coaches, followers, employees) to assert their human rights via participatory, accountable, non-discriminatory, equitable, empowering, and bonafide processes.
Over the previous decade, main worldwide sports activities our bodies together with the IOC, FIFA, World Athletics, WADA, and Commonwealth Sport have adopted human rights insurance policies (see right here for a database of human rights commitments in sports activities). Occasion house owners resembling IOC have made human rights due diligence (see right here, web page 38) a authorized requirement for host international locations and cities. The IOC’s Host Metropolis Contract, as an example, now consists of particular human rights provisions following sustained advocacy from civil society organisations. FIFA has carried out complete human rights due diligence processes for World Cup hosts, requiring detailed threat assessments, mitigations and stakeholder consultations.
India’s internet hosting ambitions will inevitably require each demonstration and implementation of sturdy human rights protections. Worldwide precedent exhibits that host international locations should conduct significant human rights due diligence earlier than, throughout, and after occasions, with accessible grievance mechanisms and efficient treatment for any hurt triggered.
A human-rights based mostly strategy isn’t restricted to mega occasion internet hosting, it’s a few whole-of-systems cultural change that locations folks on the coronary heart of governance. This implies embedding human rights concerns ranging from grassroots to skilled elite sports activities. One other particular instance is NSGA’s failure to recognise skilled athletes as employees in step with the Worldwide Labour Organisation’s (‘ILO’) Elementary Rules and Rights at Work for Athletes. Such a recognition might have enabled significant safety of athlete rights together with the appropriate to kind real and impartial employee’s unions. It now falls upon the NSB to push for these much-needed transformations across the rights of individuals in Indian sports activities.
Sustainability and Environmental Justice: Adapting and Responding to Sport’s existential menace
Sport and local weather change have a two-way relationship. Sport requires optimum environmental circumstances to operate successfully, but sporting actions and main occasions additionally contribute to greenhouse fuel emissions via journey, building, and operations. Many worldwide sport our bodies together with the IOC have adopted sustainability methods and require ecological soundness as a core pillar of occasion internet hosting.
India is amongst the world’s most local weather weak nations throughout a number of dimensions resembling excessive warmth, air pollution, monsoon disruption, sea-level rise, and flooding. These instantly threaten the viability of sporting actions and infrastructure. The postponement of the Khelo India Winter Video games 2025 as a consequence of inadequate snowfall in Gulmarg starkly illustrates how local weather change is already disrupting India’s sporting calendar. Cricket, typically described as a faith in India, is uniquely weak to on a regular basis local weather impacts. Latest evaluation by The Subsequent Check reveals that 36% of the IPL 2025 matches have been performed underneath “Excessive Warning” circumstances, with an extra 12% within the “Hazard” warmth zone. There was a 125% enhance in hazardous warmth days in Mumbai since 1970, with Thiruvananthapuram recording over 100 such days in 2024. These circumstances pose severe well being dangers to gamers, help workers and spectators whereas disrupting competitors schedules.
Issues concerning the impacts of the local weather disaster should not restricted to elite degree stadiums alone The local weather disaster is already ending the sporting desires of India’s younger on the streets. Altering local weather has the worst affect on probably the most uncovered and weak, together with these from deprived socio-economic backgrounds, rural areas, girls, and marginalised teams resembling disabled folks, Dalits, and tribal communities. These teams already face disproportionate boundaries to accessing sporting alternatives. Concurrently, they’ve the least sources to mitigate or adapt to the consequences of local weather change. If grassroots are impacted, it’ll have cascading impacts for elite expertise pathways in addition to the purpose of accelerating sporting participation.
Curiously, regardless of these vulnerabilities and existential dangers, local weather and sustainability concerns stay starkly absent in debates on Indian sports activities governance and coverage. No Indian sport physique, membership or organisation has signed as much as the UN Sports activities for Local weather Motion Framework or the Sports activities for Nature Framework. Whereas France has printed a nationwide plan to adapt sport practices to local weather change and the UK has commissioned a report to check the monetary and environmental challenges local weather change poses to grassroots sport, India lags behind.
It will have been ideally suited if the NSGA had explicitly included sustainability as a core concern. Given India’s local weather vulnerability and the differential affect on folks based mostly on their present exposures, India must undertake an environmental justice strategy to sports activities governance and sustainability. It can require consideration of who’s worst affected, most uncovered, and least in a position to adapt or mitigate local weather impacts.
Fairness, Range, and Inclusion: Sport for all with out discrimination
Entry to sport and sporting alternatives constitutes a elementary human proper. Sadly, the NSGA fails to make provisions to deal with systemic boundaries, discrimination and the fable of ‘degree enjoying fields’ that forestall deprived, weak, and rural populations from collaborating in sporting actions. Efficient inclusion provisions would require the federal government, sport federations and NSB to gather complete information on participation patterns, establish these being excluded, perceive the explanations for exclusion, and develop focused insurance policies to deal with these gaps.
The significance of range mainstreaming may be illustrated via two examples. The NSGA in part 4 states that each nationwide sports activities physique government committee shall have no more than fifteen members of whom not less than 4 shall be girls. It’s unclear why this proportion (4 of fifteen) was chosen as it could show inadequate to grant significant voice to girls. This clause additionally fails to make provisions for ample illustration in governance and decision-making of different traditionally marginalised teams together with disabled individuals, Dalits, tribal populations, and queer communities. Except weak teams have a seat on the desk within the rooms the place choices are made, it’s troublesome to think about that the particular disadvantages they face may be understood and applicable participation frameworks that respect dignity may be designed.
One other instance is NSGA’s omission of equal pay provisions which represents a big missed alternative for international management. It’s typically claimed that males’s sport ‘deserves’ more cash as a result of it makes more cash. This ignores how girls have been barred for many years from equal services, funding, media protection and management, which stored girls’s sport much less seen and fewer worthwhile. Treating sport solely as a product to promote, fairly than as a public good with social worth, locks in these inequalities. Equal pay is not only about equity; it displays primary rules of non-discrimination and equal alternative embedded within the Indian Structure. With out deliberate motion from governments, sponsors and governing our bodies, sport will preserve reproducing gender hierarchies underneath the false cowl of market neutrality. Whereas the Board of Management for Cricket in India (BCCI) has commendably carried out equal pay (not less than by way of match charges), the laws might have gone additional and mandated equality to incorporate all features of compensation resembling contractual advantages, services and different compensation for all athletes representing India no matter gender or sport. The US’ Equal Pay for Group USA Act 2022 offers a legislative mannequin that India might have adopted.
Protected Sports activities: Creating protected and inclusive sporting environments
The NSGA mandates that the NSB shall be answerable for the formulation of a protected sport coverage (sections 6(f) and 13). It’s no secret that this particular point out of protected sport within the NSGA (not like the opposite concerns talked about above) is probably going a response to the long-standing protests by Indian wrestlers towards sexual harassment and violence. Whereas mandatory, ‘protected sport’ appears to have been conceptualised narrowly within the NSGA, to primarily concentrate on the ‘security of ladies and minor athletes’. Whereas the bodily security of weak teams calls for particular protections and the protected sport coverage should incorporate that, ‘protected sport’ is a much wider idea. As recognised by the IOC, Commonwealth Sport and different worldwide organisations, protected sport is about creating environments which are respectful, inclusive, equitable and free from violence, abuse, harassment, and neglect for all members.
World safeguarding finest practices from Africa, Europe, and the UK recognise that abuse and hurt can have an effect on any participant no matter age or gender, requiring holistic safety mechanisms. As an instance the broader holistic understanding of ‘protected sport’, take into account the occasions after Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory in IPL 2025. When the celebrations turned tragic and eleven folks misplaced their lives, it was a failure of sport to be ‘protected’ for the followers. A significant ‘protected sport’ strategy would have thought-about security and well-being of all sporting members together with athletes, employees and followers, earlier than, throughout and after the sporting occasion. Equally, stray canine biting worldwide coaches on the venue of the World Para Athletics Championships in Delhi is once more a failure of ‘protected sport’.
It is important that protected sport insurance policies and the related grievance redressal mechanisms embed safeguarding as an ongoing course of that permits for impartial oversight, accessible reporting mechanisms, whistle-blower protections, trauma-informed investigation procedures, clear decision-making and significant penalties for violations. That is essential in order that protected sport can transfer past a mere public relations train to create real cultural change.
Conclusion: Constructing a Folks-Centred Sports activities Governance Framework
As India pursues its internet hosting ambitions for the 2036 Olympics and Paralympic Video games and different main occasions, worldwide scrutiny will inevitably concentrate on whether or not the nation’s sports activities governance framework meets modern requirements of human rights safety, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and security. NSGA, whereas progressive in some respects, falls in need of the great strategy required to display real dedication to the values that more and more outline worldwide sports activities governance.
It’s noteworthy that the governance concerns highlighted right here have to be seen collectively as a part of a single complete and built-in framework fairly than completely different fragmented initiatives. Take into account the existential menace posed by the local weather disaster. It wants a multi-stakeholder strategy because it impacts all stakeholders in various levels. It wants a human rights-based strategy as completely different rights resembling life, well being, schooling, work and so forth are impacted because of the impacts of the disaster. As local weather change compounds present inequalities, disproportionately affecting entry to sport for weak communities, an fairness and justice lens is important. Concurrently, it’s a protected sport concern as excessive warmth make it unsafe for play to go on as standard.
Due to this fact, a very transformative Good Governance strategy requires recognising the interconnected nature of human rights, sustainability, fairness, and safeguarding that acknowledges the advanced social, financial, political, and environmental components that form sporting experiences. Essentially, it’s a recognition that accountable sports activities governance is about folks—athletes, followers, communities, and all these whose lives are touched by sporting actions. A people-centred, intersectional, built-in strategy presents the potential to rework not simply the legal guidelines and establishments that govern sport, however the broader tradition, structure, and norms that form sporting experiences throughout India. The Nationwide Sports activities Board now has the chance to deal with these gaps via its regulatory powers and coverage growth capabilities.
*Shubham Jain is a Doctoral Researcher on the College of Cambridge and Co-Editor of the Routledge Ebook Collection on “Sports activities and Human Rights”. He researches, writes, and speaks on the intersection of sports activities legislation, governance, human rights, and environmental justice. He has supplied skilled recommendation on these issues to worldwide sport our bodies, broadcasters, civil society actors, and UN organisations.
The Nationwide Sports activities Governance Act 2025 marks a significant reform in India’s sports activities regulation, introducing new establishments and athlete illustration. Nonetheless, it overlooks important international finest practices on human rights, sustainability, fairness, and safeguarding. This piece argues for embedding built-in, people-centred “Good Governance Frameworks” to modernise India’s sports activities governance and internet hosting ambitions.
India’s sports activities governance panorama skilled a transformative second in the summertime of 2025 with the passage of the Nationwide Sports activities Governance Act 2025 (‘NSGA’), alongside the Nationwide Sports activities Coverage and the On-line Gaming Act. These reforms characterize an bold try to modernise sports activities governance, with a transparent purpose to safe internet hosting rights for the 2036 Summer time Olympics and Paralympics and different mega-sporting occasions together with the Commonwealth Video games 2030. The NSGA introduces commendable structural improvements such because the Nationwide Sports activities Board (‘NSB’) for regulatory oversight, the Nationwide Sports activities Tribunal for dispute decision, Sports activities Election Panel to supervise free and truthful elections to the game our bodies, and enhanced athlete illustration via the Athletes Committee (mentioned right here, right here, right here and right here). Nonetheless, it concurrently represents a missed alternative to include important rights-based concerns that outline international finest apply in sports activities governance.
NSGA’s failure to embed significant stakeholder ecosystem approaches, complete human rights protections, sustainability and environmental justice concerns, fairness and inclusion provisions, and sturdy safeguarding measures (collectively, ‘Good Governance Frameworks’) dangers positioning India’s sports activities governance framework as outdated even earlier than it has been carried out. This omission is especially hanging given India’s internet hosting ambitions and the worldwide sports activities neighborhood’s more and more stringent Good Governance necessities for main occasion hosts. On this piece, I’ll talk about why it is important for Indian sports activities legislation and coverage to embed these Good Governance Frameworks. Now that the NSGA is in operation, it’s incumbent upon the NSB (because the regulator) to deal with these shortcomings via its residuary powers underneath part 6 of the NSGA.
Ecosystem Engagement Strategy: Contemplating Pursuits and Voices of all Stakeholders
Up to date sports activities governance literature recognises that efficient regulation extends past athletes and directors to embody a complete ecosystem of stakeholders whose rights, pursuits and voices have to be thought-about in decision-making processes. The United Nations (‘UN’) Secretary-Common’s current report on sport and sustainable growth identifies a people-focused definition of stakeholders within the sports activities ecosystem that features athletes, followers, journalists, public and neighborhood members, volunteers, coaches and directors, employees, officers, and marginalised communities. Likewise, the Worldwide Olympic Committee’s (‘IOC’) Strategic Framework on Human Rights explicitly acknowledges the necessity to take into account the pursuits of employees, native communities, and different stakeholders past athletes.
Whereas the NSGA commendably prioritises athletes via inclusion of athlete voices in governance and makes provisions for contemplating athlete welfare, this imaginative and prescient fails to mirror the evolution of world sports activities governance debates over the previous decade. The human rights-focused, people-centred perspective of the game ecosystem reveals the big quantity and variety of organisations and folks that contribute to it of their completely different roles and capacities. Understanding these interconnected relationships is essential for figuring out the place dangers can come up and who wants safety underneath the legislation.
The NSGA’s oversight in failing to account for fan pursuits and rights is especially troublesome, provided that followers characterize the first customers {of professional} sport whose engagement in the end sustains the whole ecosystem. Indian sports activities followers have traditionally been handled abysmally with insufficient stadium services, poor crowd administration and poor occasion data being a typical a part of the expertise. The laws ought to have imposed obligations on sports activities our bodies and decision-makers to undertake significant fan engagement processes, recognising that sports activities governance impacts not solely the athletes and help workers but additionally tens of millions of individuals whose emotional and monetary help runs these sporting competitions.
It’s crucial that Indian sports activities governance undertake this wider stakeholder ecosystem engagement strategy that recognises the pursuits, rights and voices of the various people and communities related to sports activities and concurrently embed duties on decision-makers together with governments at numerous ranges, sport our bodies, federations, producers, suppliers and occasion organisers.
Human Rights-Based mostly Strategy: Of, by and for the Folks
Regardless of containing some rights-based provisions, significantly relating to athlete rights and welfare (sections 6(i), 9 and 12(4)), the NSGA basically fails to undertake a complete human rights-based strategy that has turn into normal throughout worldwide sports activities governing our bodies. Such an strategy emphasises the obligations of institutional actors as ‘duty-bearers’ and the capability of ‘rights-holders’ (on this case, athletes, coaches, followers, employees) to assert their human rights via participatory, accountable, non-discriminatory, equitable, empowering, and bonafide processes.
Over the previous decade, main worldwide sports activities our bodies together with the IOC, FIFA, World Athletics, WADA, and Commonwealth Sport have adopted human rights insurance policies (see right here for a database of human rights commitments in sports activities). Occasion house owners resembling IOC have made human rights due diligence (see right here, web page 38) a authorized requirement for host international locations and cities. The IOC’s Host Metropolis Contract, as an example, now consists of particular human rights provisions following sustained advocacy from civil society organisations. FIFA has carried out complete human rights due diligence processes for World Cup hosts, requiring detailed threat assessments, mitigations and stakeholder consultations.
India’s internet hosting ambitions will inevitably require each demonstration and implementation of sturdy human rights protections. Worldwide precedent exhibits that host international locations should conduct significant human rights due diligence earlier than, throughout, and after occasions, with accessible grievance mechanisms and efficient treatment for any hurt triggered.
A human-rights based mostly strategy isn’t restricted to mega occasion internet hosting, it’s a few whole-of-systems cultural change that locations folks on the coronary heart of governance. This implies embedding human rights concerns ranging from grassroots to skilled elite sports activities. One other particular instance is NSGA’s failure to recognise skilled athletes as employees in step with the Worldwide Labour Organisation’s (‘ILO’) Elementary Rules and Rights at Work for Athletes. Such a recognition might have enabled significant safety of athlete rights together with the appropriate to kind real and impartial employee’s unions. It now falls upon the NSB to push for these much-needed transformations across the rights of individuals in Indian sports activities.
Sustainability and Environmental Justice: Adapting and Responding to Sport’s existential menace
Sport and local weather change have a two-way relationship. Sport requires optimum environmental circumstances to operate successfully, but sporting actions and main occasions additionally contribute to greenhouse fuel emissions via journey, building, and operations. Many worldwide sport our bodies together with the IOC have adopted sustainability methods and require ecological soundness as a core pillar of occasion internet hosting.
India is amongst the world’s most local weather weak nations throughout a number of dimensions resembling excessive warmth, air pollution, monsoon disruption, sea-level rise, and flooding. These instantly threaten the viability of sporting actions and infrastructure. The postponement of the Khelo India Winter Video games 2025 as a consequence of inadequate snowfall in Gulmarg starkly illustrates how local weather change is already disrupting India’s sporting calendar. Cricket, typically described as a faith in India, is uniquely weak to on a regular basis local weather impacts. Latest evaluation by The Subsequent Check reveals that 36% of the IPL 2025 matches have been performed underneath “Excessive Warning” circumstances, with an extra 12% within the “Hazard” warmth zone. There was a 125% enhance in hazardous warmth days in Mumbai since 1970, with Thiruvananthapuram recording over 100 such days in 2024. These circumstances pose severe well being dangers to gamers, help workers and spectators whereas disrupting competitors schedules.
Issues concerning the impacts of the local weather disaster should not restricted to elite degree stadiums alone The local weather disaster is already ending the sporting desires of India’s younger on the streets. Altering local weather has the worst affect on probably the most uncovered and weak, together with these from deprived socio-economic backgrounds, rural areas, girls, and marginalised teams resembling disabled folks, Dalits, and tribal communities. These teams already face disproportionate boundaries to accessing sporting alternatives. Concurrently, they’ve the least sources to mitigate or adapt to the consequences of local weather change. If grassroots are impacted, it’ll have cascading impacts for elite expertise pathways in addition to the purpose of accelerating sporting participation.
Curiously, regardless of these vulnerabilities and existential dangers, local weather and sustainability concerns stay starkly absent in debates on Indian sports activities governance and coverage. No Indian sport physique, membership or organisation has signed as much as the UN Sports activities for Local weather Motion Framework or the Sports activities for Nature Framework. Whereas France has printed a nationwide plan to adapt sport practices to local weather change and the UK has commissioned a report to check the monetary and environmental challenges local weather change poses to grassroots sport, India lags behind.
It will have been ideally suited if the NSGA had explicitly included sustainability as a core concern. Given India’s local weather vulnerability and the differential affect on folks based mostly on their present exposures, India must undertake an environmental justice strategy to sports activities governance and sustainability. It can require consideration of who’s worst affected, most uncovered, and least in a position to adapt or mitigate local weather impacts.
Fairness, Range, and Inclusion: Sport for all with out discrimination
Entry to sport and sporting alternatives constitutes a elementary human proper. Sadly, the NSGA fails to make provisions to deal with systemic boundaries, discrimination and the fable of ‘degree enjoying fields’ that forestall deprived, weak, and rural populations from collaborating in sporting actions. Efficient inclusion provisions would require the federal government, sport federations and NSB to gather complete information on participation patterns, establish these being excluded, perceive the explanations for exclusion, and develop focused insurance policies to deal with these gaps.
The significance of range mainstreaming may be illustrated via two examples. The NSGA in part 4 states that each nationwide sports activities physique government committee shall have no more than fifteen members of whom not less than 4 shall be girls. It’s unclear why this proportion (4 of fifteen) was chosen as it could show inadequate to grant significant voice to girls. This clause additionally fails to make provisions for ample illustration in governance and decision-making of different traditionally marginalised teams together with disabled individuals, Dalits, tribal populations, and queer communities. Except weak teams have a seat on the desk within the rooms the place choices are made, it’s troublesome to think about that the particular disadvantages they face may be understood and applicable participation frameworks that respect dignity may be designed.
One other instance is NSGA’s omission of equal pay provisions which represents a big missed alternative for international management. It’s typically claimed that males’s sport ‘deserves’ more cash as a result of it makes more cash. This ignores how girls have been barred for many years from equal services, funding, media protection and management, which stored girls’s sport much less seen and fewer worthwhile. Treating sport solely as a product to promote, fairly than as a public good with social worth, locks in these inequalities. Equal pay is not only about equity; it displays primary rules of non-discrimination and equal alternative embedded within the Indian Structure. With out deliberate motion from governments, sponsors and governing our bodies, sport will preserve reproducing gender hierarchies underneath the false cowl of market neutrality. Whereas the Board of Management for Cricket in India (BCCI) has commendably carried out equal pay (not less than by way of match charges), the laws might have gone additional and mandated equality to incorporate all features of compensation resembling contractual advantages, services and different compensation for all athletes representing India no matter gender or sport. The US’ Equal Pay for Group USA Act 2022 offers a legislative mannequin that India might have adopted.
Protected Sports activities: Creating protected and inclusive sporting environments
The NSGA mandates that the NSB shall be answerable for the formulation of a protected sport coverage (sections 6(f) and 13). It’s no secret that this particular point out of protected sport within the NSGA (not like the opposite concerns talked about above) is probably going a response to the long-standing protests by Indian wrestlers towards sexual harassment and violence. Whereas mandatory, ‘protected sport’ appears to have been conceptualised narrowly within the NSGA, to primarily concentrate on the ‘security of ladies and minor athletes’. Whereas the bodily security of weak teams calls for particular protections and the protected sport coverage should incorporate that, ‘protected sport’ is a much wider idea. As recognised by the IOC, Commonwealth Sport and different worldwide organisations, protected sport is about creating environments which are respectful, inclusive, equitable and free from violence, abuse, harassment, and neglect for all members.
World safeguarding finest practices from Africa, Europe, and the UK recognise that abuse and hurt can have an effect on any participant no matter age or gender, requiring holistic safety mechanisms. As an instance the broader holistic understanding of ‘protected sport’, take into account the occasions after Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory in IPL 2025. When the celebrations turned tragic and eleven folks misplaced their lives, it was a failure of sport to be ‘protected’ for the followers. A significant ‘protected sport’ strategy would have thought-about security and well-being of all sporting members together with athletes, employees and followers, earlier than, throughout and after the sporting occasion. Equally, stray canine biting worldwide coaches on the venue of the World Para Athletics Championships in Delhi is once more a failure of ‘protected sport’.
It is important that protected sport insurance policies and the related grievance redressal mechanisms embed safeguarding as an ongoing course of that permits for impartial oversight, accessible reporting mechanisms, whistle-blower protections, trauma-informed investigation procedures, clear decision-making and significant penalties for violations. That is essential in order that protected sport can transfer past a mere public relations train to create real cultural change.
Conclusion: Constructing a Folks-Centred Sports activities Governance Framework
As India pursues its internet hosting ambitions for the 2036 Olympics and Paralympic Video games and different main occasions, worldwide scrutiny will inevitably concentrate on whether or not the nation’s sports activities governance framework meets modern requirements of human rights safety, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and security. NSGA, whereas progressive in some respects, falls in need of the great strategy required to display real dedication to the values that more and more outline worldwide sports activities governance.
It’s noteworthy that the governance concerns highlighted right here have to be seen collectively as a part of a single complete and built-in framework fairly than completely different fragmented initiatives. Take into account the existential menace posed by the local weather disaster. It wants a multi-stakeholder strategy because it impacts all stakeholders in various levels. It wants a human rights-based strategy as completely different rights resembling life, well being, schooling, work and so forth are impacted because of the impacts of the disaster. As local weather change compounds present inequalities, disproportionately affecting entry to sport for weak communities, an fairness and justice lens is important. Concurrently, it’s a protected sport concern as excessive warmth make it unsafe for play to go on as standard.
Due to this fact, a very transformative Good Governance strategy requires recognising the interconnected nature of human rights, sustainability, fairness, and safeguarding that acknowledges the advanced social, financial, political, and environmental components that form sporting experiences. Essentially, it’s a recognition that accountable sports activities governance is about folks—athletes, followers, communities, and all these whose lives are touched by sporting actions. A people-centred, intersectional, built-in strategy presents the potential to rework not simply the legal guidelines and establishments that govern sport, however the broader tradition, structure, and norms that form sporting experiences throughout India. The Nationwide Sports activities Board now has the chance to deal with these gaps via its regulatory powers and coverage growth capabilities.
*Shubham Jain is a Doctoral Researcher on the College of Cambridge and Co-Editor of the Routledge Ebook Collection on “Sports activities and Human Rights”. He researches, writes, and speaks on the intersection of sports activities legislation, governance, human rights, and environmental justice. He has supplied skilled recommendation on these issues to worldwide sport our bodies, broadcasters, civil society actors, and UN organisations.
