"Mass participation in sport is a precondition for sporting excellence." Examine this with reference to the Khelo India programme and Khelo Bharat Niti 2025.

Sporting excellence rests on a sports pyramid: a wide base of participants lets talent surface, and a narrow apex is trained for the podium. Khelo Bharat Niti 2025 accepts this logic, placing "Sports as a People's Movement" alongside "Excellence on the Global Stage" [1]. The statement largely holds, but a mass base is necessary, not sufficient.

          Podium – elite support (TOPS)
            Khelo India Athletes
       Khelo India Centres and academies
     Mass base – KIYG, schools, Fit India

Fig: The sports pyramid

Mass base as talent pool: Khelo India evidence

• Scouting at scale: the 8th KIYG, Telangana (December 2026), brings about 8,000 participants to six cities, including indigenous sports like Gatka and Kalaripayattu [2].
• Grassroots network: 1,067 Khelo India Centres and 267 supported academies [3].
• Base converts to apex: 28 of India's 117 athletes at Paris 2024 were Khelo India Athletes (KIAs); at Hangzhou, KIAs won 42 of India's 106 medals [4].

Khelo Bharat Niti 2025: joining base to peak

• Links mass participation and fitness indices with grassroots-to-elite talent identification [1].
• Integration with NEP 2020 catches talent in schools; the social-development pillar widens the base to women, tribal communities and persons with disabilities [1].

Why participation alone is not enough

• Narrow pipeline: only 2,745 KIAs receive sustained support [3]; in 2018-19, 893 of 1,518 selected players dropped out [5].
• Unspent, uneven funds: ₹324 crore spent of ₹520 crore allocated (2018-19); only 13 states got infrastructure grants [5].
• Coaching deficit: 544 of 1,524 coach posts vacant (2019) [5]; about 45% of SAI's sanctioned posts vacant (2025) [6].
• Idle infrastructure: some of the 24 National Centres of Excellence are non-operational [6].
• Elite inputs: medallists also need TOPS-level sports science and coaching, which mass events cannot supply.

Mass participation is thus the foundation of excellence, as KIA conversions show, but the bridge from base to podium is built by coaches, funds and maintained venues. The Standing Committee has advised filling SAI vacancies within six months, examining a statutory SAI with its own cadre, and folding Khelo India into SAI [6]. Acting on this would turn "Sports for Nation Building" [1] from a festival into a pipeline.