New campaign in India fights for sport to be part of main curriculum in schools

That was the main message conveyed in a new campaign video featuring some of India's finest athletes.

The campaign, 'Let There Be Sport' was created to question the conventional mindset that sport is a digression from academics in India.

The idea is to champion sport, promote it as a life skill and to integrate sport into the main curriculum of educational institutions nationwide.

The campaign was initiated following the shocking findings by a sport brand and a reputed research and analytics firm in India.

The Puma-Nielsen report, made public last month, gathered insights from 4,280 respondents, aged from 18-65 across 16 cities in the South Asian nation.

It revealed that only 20 per cent of adults in urban India met the World Health Organization recommended index of a minimum of 150-300 minutes of physical exercise per week.

Children in India, meanwhile, spend a mere 86 minutes instead of the minimum 420 minutes recommended by the world health body per week.

It was noted that direct correlation was found between children active in sports and improved academic performance. Active adults, meanwhile, were likely to exhibit positive emotions than others in general by 21 per cent.

According to the report, the children and adults surveyed had listed "lack of time" as the main reason of not sweating it out, followed by lack of facilities and high rental cost.

Read APN News to know more about the report.