Patna: At 4pm on the dot, hundreds of girls and boys stream out of the dingy alleys of Patna’s poorest neighbourhoods, sporting jerseys with ‘Bihar’ emblazoned on them in red, blue, and neon. Some march on foot, others squeeze into rickshaws. A few from wealthier localities even roll up in bikes and cars. Their destination is the same — Kankarbagh’s Patliputra Sports Complex.
It’s where the “world’s largest sports competition” is unfolding. Under the watchful eye of coaches, it’s all action. Wrestlers lock limbs on the mat. A boy twists mid-air, snapping his leg at a yellow ball in sepak takraw or foot volleyball. On the rugby field, bodies collide and shouts erupt from the sidelines.
For many players, most aged 14 to 22, the stadium—and the competition as well—is the doorway to a better future. For the Nitish Kumar government, it’s a chance to rescript Bihar’s sporting story. The plan: spot talent, hone it, and win global medals. The target: Olympic athletes by 2032, medals by 2036.
Just as Haryana built a medal machine with wrestling, and Jharkhand turned hockey into its stronghold, Bihar is chasing its own breakthrough. But it’s betting on a different approach. Instead of sticking to big-ticket sports like hockey, it’s also throwing its weight behind less-crowded fields like rugby and sepak takraw.
To create this pipeline, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar launched Mashal, a massive statewide talent competition at the Patliputra stadium on 9 December. The state is building stadiums, hiring coaches, and scouting talent. It’s even rewarding medals with jobs.
“Bihar is back,” IPS officer Raveendran Sankaran, the director general of the Bihar State Sports Authority (BSSA), told ThePrint. “By the end of our talent drive, we will have a pool of 5,000 to 6,000 players under 14 and 16 years of age. We are going to train this talent for our mission 2032-36 Olympics.”
The BSSA’s budget has leapt from Rs 30 crore in 2022 to Rs 680 crore in 2024, and in January, Bihar created a standalone Sports Department—earlier under Art and Culture— to fast-track infrastructure and schemes for athletes.
But money alone can’t scrub away decades of dysfunction. Bihar’s sports system has long been marred by corruption, crumbling infrastructure, and a shortage of trained coaches. This is why the government is banking majorly on talent to cut through the mess. And where players once had to scrounge, they now receive ready support.
“We would beg officials to get us one pair of sporting shorts, and travel on unconfirmed train tickets,” recalled Dr Karunesh Kumar, a former national sepak takraw player and now a sports officer at IIT Patna. “But now, if a sportsperson is missing equipment, the state’s agencies would even fly that equipment out. That shows how serious the sports authority is.”
Bihar’s ambitious new sports policy is built on four pillars: talent scouting, talent nurturing, talent retention, and talent promotion.
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Talent hunt, jobs for medals
Not too long ago, Bihar’s sports system was an afterthought. Stadium gates stayed shut for most of the year and training often took place in parks and streets. Former players coached local children at their own expense, with little to no support from the state.
“Back then, people believed in the saying — kheloge kudoge banoge kharab, padhoge likhoge banoge nawab (play sports and you’ll ruin your life, study and you’ll be a king),” said Karunesh Kumar.
That idea has been flipped on its head. Bihar’s new slogan is “Medal Lao, Naukri Pao” (Win a medal, get a job).
Every evening now, over 300 players gather at the Patliputra Sports Complex, with 100 of them living on-site. Spread across 16 acres, it has a 400-metre athletics track, swimming pool, and arenas for boxing, kabaddi, basketball, badminton, and table tennis.
“Now that we have the state by our side, every sportsperson is thinking about representing Bihar on the national as well as international fronts,” said Sweety Kumari, a 24-year-old international rugby player from Barh.
Driving this change is a new state sports policy built on four pillars: talent scouting, talent nurturing, talent retention, and talent promotion.
Leading the scouting effort is Mashal, a talent hunt involving 60 lakh students from 40,000 government schools. Players compete through block, district, division, and state-level trials in athletics, kabaddi, cycling, football, and volleyball. By the end of the hunt, Bihar aims to have a pool of 6,000 under-16 players ready for elite training at the Patliputra Sports Complex in Patna and the International Sports Complex in Rajgir. To top it off, outstanding players stand to win cash prizes from a Rs 10 crore pool, with the highest prize set at Rs 20 lakh.
Sports results take time. It’s not like instant coffee. What Bihar needs now is patience. Bihar’s competition is with its past
-Harendra Singh, Indian women’s hockey team coach
On the ‘nurturing’ front, Bihar now offers annual sports scholarships in three categories — Utkarsh (Rs 20 lakh), Saksham (Rs 5 lakh), and Prerna (Rs 3 lakh) — for athletes who win at international, national, or state-level events respectively.
The infrastructure is growing fast too. Once, Bihar’s primary stadium was the Patliputra Sports Complex, built for Rs 19.98 crore in 2012. Now, the spotlight is on the International Sports Complex in Rajgir, a Rs 740 crore project touted as one of India’s largest and most advanced sports facilities. It’s still under construction, but in August, Bihar’s first Sports Academy and Bihar Sports University were inaugurated there by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Bihar is also adding three-storey Khel Bhawans for indoor games across the state. Twenty-six Khel Bhawans are already operational, with more on the way. The next step is to establish 50,000 sports clubs across 8,000 panchayats.
“We want to bring the sports spirit to the panchayat level,” said Bihar’s Sports Minister Surendra Mehta. “We are focusing on ‘Gaon se Khelgaon Tak’ (from village to sports village).”
To ensure players get proper training, Bihar is hiring skilled coaches and ramping up its training budget. Spending on training jumped from Rs 3 crore in 2022 for 217 players and coaches to Rs 7.5 crore in 2024 for 644 players.
“We’re also bringing in coaches from outside Bihar,” said BSSA DG Raveendran Sankaran. For 200 coaching positions advertised for 23 sports, the state received 987 applications from across India. Bihar has set a monthly salary of Rs 50,000 for these coaches.
It was my father’s dream to see me in the Olympics. I am striving to fulfill his dream of becoming an Olympian through the children of Bihar, my karma bhoomi
-Raveendran Sankaran, DG of the Bihar State Sports Authority
Then there’s the Medal Lao, Naukri Pao scheme. This year, 71 players were appointed to government jobs, including 24 sub-inspectors and several gazetted officers in departments like the secretariat and finance. This scheme was enabled by the Bihar Outstanding Sportspersons Direct Appointment Rules 2023, which fast-tracks job appointments for athletes.
“Earlier, sports vacancies would take a minimum of three to four years to fill. There was so much red tape,” said Karunesh Kumar. “Players would waste their prime years securing financial stability. By the time they got a job, they would be in their late 20s.”
That is finally changing. In 2023, Beauty Singh from Nalanda and Arti Kumari from Nawada, both members of Bihar’s rugby team, were awaiting government job offer letters. Today, their WhatsApp profile pictures show them in police uniforms.
“I am the first girl in my family to play sports, and with the police daroga job, I am also the first to become a working woman. It feels surreal,” Arti said as she rushed to her morning classes at the Rajgir training centre. Her father often calls to tell her that more and more girls are taking up sports.
Previously, Bihar players could land government jobs by participating in a certain number of national tournaments. Now, only medallists qualify, which incentivises victory rather than mere participation
Gunning for victory & visibility
On the promotion front, Bihar is planting its flag on India’s sporting map with headline events like the Bihar Women’s Asian Champions Trophy in Rajgir last month. The hockey tournament drew seven crore views on BSSA’s social media platforms and was broadcast live to 172 countries.
“Organising something of this grandeur was truly challenging. It significantly helped change the state’s perception,” said Sankaran, adding that its viewership even topped the Hockey Olympic telecast.
Much of Bihar’s sporting resurgence is being credited to Sankaran, director-general of the Bihar State Sports Authority (BSSA) since 2021. Originally from Tamil Nadu, the IPS officer has become something of a cult figure in Bihar’s sports community, where athletes and coaches describe him as a ‘saviour’ of Bihar sports.
“It was my father’s dream to see me in the Olympics. I am striving to fulfill his dream of becoming an Olympian through the children of Bihar, my karma bhoomi,” he said.
Shortly after he took charge, the Bihar Cabinet approved new BSSA by-laws to improve the authority’s efficiency and autonomy. The by-laws also cleared the path for a formal sports policy to turn Bihar from a “dormant volcano” into a force to reckon with in Indian sports.
Now the state is starting to announce itself to the rest of India.
At the 2022 National Games in Gujarat, Bihar ended with just two bronze medals. But at the 2023 Goa National Games, it picked up three silver and six bronze medals. At the 2022 National Junior Athletics Championship in Guwahati, Bihar’s total was nine medals (five silver, four bronze), but by 2023 in Coimbatore, it bagged eleven (six gold, four silver, one bronze).
Whenever we travelled outside the state to participate, other teams would mock us, saying we were there just for fun, not to win. At least Bihar is seen as serious about sports now
-Pankaj Ranjan, sepak takraw coach with BSSA
Then, this month, Bihar’s under-20 boys’ relay team won a bronze in the 4x400m relay at the Junior Athletics Nationals in Odisha — Bihar’s first-ever medal in this event.
“This is the most coveted and tough event where states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Haryana, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal used to be the favourites,” said Sankaran. “We broke the myth and showed it to the athletics fraternity of the country.”
On the international stage, Bihar got its first Olympic representation when Shreyasi Singh, a shooter and BJP MLA, competed in Paris. In the Paralympics, Shailesh Kumar represented Bihar in high jump, narrowly missing a bronze medal. Both have also won medals at the Asian and Commonwealth Games.
But Bihar isn’t just chasing medals — it wants its players to feel the power of a home crowd.
Morale matters
When Patna hosted the 32nd Junior National Fencing Championship this month, chants of “Bihar! Bihar! Bihar!” echoed from the stands as the state’s fencers faced off against rivals from across India.
“Earlier, Bihar’s players would travel to other states, where no one would cheer for them,” said Krishan Kumar, a high-performance manager with the central government’s Khelo India programme for supporting players. “But this time, they had their own crowd behind them. It’s psychological. It boosts their morale.”
Bihar’s fencers didn’t win medals at this championship, but they didn’t go down easy either. Matches were tighter, and opponents had to work harder.
“Their finishing touch has improved,” said Kumar. He pointed to Keshar Raj, a 13-year-old fencer often compared to the Rani of Jhansi for her fierce style and a gold medallist at the 68th National School Games in Jammu.
Now that we have the state by our side, every sportsperson is thinking about representing Bihar on the national as well as international fronts
-Sweety Kumari, international rugby player from Barh
“Earlier, players trained outside Bihar would win a medal or two, but those trained within the state never shined,” Kumar said.
A key part of Bihar’s strategy is encouraging girls to compete, which often requires getting buy-in from families. At an event honouring Keshar, Sankaran addressed her mother, Kumari Rani, directly from the stage. “Let her play,” he said, urging her not to marry Keshar off early.
“That line stayed with my mother,” Keshar said. Today, she trains at the National Centre of Excellence in Guwahati under the Sports Authority of India and is on track for a spot in the Khelo India scholarship programme, according to Krishan Kumar.
“Girls are usually given two to three years to prove themselves. If they don’t, they’re married off,” her mother Rani said. “That’s why the DG made that statement.”
‘Our canvas has become much bigger’
In Pooja Kumari’s 8×10-foot one-room home in Patna’s Pirmohini area, a yellow trophy gleams beneath statues of deities. She grew up here with her three siblings and their parents. There’s barely room for an extra pair of slippers and her father pays Rs 3,000 in rent each month, plus electricity bills.
But for Pooja, life has grown beyond these four walls—and it’s because of sepak takraw.
“It changed my life,” she said.
A decade ago, as a 12-year-old she’d sit for hours with her baby sister Arti on her lap, watching kids vault a yellow ball over a net using only their feet, head, and chest. One day, she walked up to the man coaching them — Pankaj Ranjan — and asked if she could play too. He handed her the ball on the spot.
“Her fighting spirit caught my attention,” said Ranjan, now a full-time sepak takraw coach with Bihar’s State Sports Authority, taking a breather from coaching nearly 80 children at the Patliputra Sports Complex.
At first, Pooja couldn’t afford the Rs 1,500 ball, so she borrowed one from others. By 2014, she was playing at the Junior Nationals, where her team won bronze. This year, she secured a government job as a sub-inspector under the Medal Lao scheme. She’s now training in Rajgir with 23 other athlete-recruits while preparing for international trials.
Her younger sister Arti has followed her footsteps. At 18, she now has more medals than Pooja and competes at the senior national level.
Bihar is competing in high-medal-tally sports like fencing, archery, and shooting, which are also priorities for other sports-dominant states. Everyone is doing it. So Bihar needs to level up
-Krishan Kumar, high-performance manager with Khelo India
“I got interested in the game in 2017,” said Arti, gesturing to the narrow alleys of her working-class locality, where children barely have space to play hopscotch.
Like Pooja, Arti trained for years at Coconut Park, a neglected ground in Patna. That changed after Sankaran began opening up the Patliputra Sports Complex to all players. The complex was stocked with equipment and players had direct access to the DG’s office for complaints.
“We got this complex to practice in,” Arti said with pride. “Our canvas has become much bigger now.”
Ever since word of Pooja’s government job spread, more girls in the neighbourhood have started training. Last year, Khushi Kumari, 15, from the next lane, joined sepak takraw. At the Patliputra Sports Complex, several other girls from similar backgrounds — daughters of daily wage labourers, drivers, and migrant workers — now train regularly.
In Ashok Nagar, another Pooja Kumari, aged 14, trains alongside her younger brothers. Their father, Pintu Kumar, drives private vehicles for a living. Originally from Darbhanga, the family had never heard of sepak takraw until recently. Their mother, Rekha Devi, still can’t pronounce the name of the sport.
“They play with a ball, that’s all I know,” she said. But she knows enough to support them.
The siblings were introduced to the sport by Rashmi Kumari, an 18-year-old neighbour who’s been playing since 2018.
Pooja, Rashmi, Khushi, and Arti are part of a growing wave of Bihar’s rising stars in non-mainstream sports like sepak takraw. All are national medalists, except for Khushi, who is scheduled to compete in the sub-junior nationals later this month.
“Whenever we travelled outside the state to participate, other teams would mock us, saying we were there just for fun, not to win,” Ranjan recalled. “At least Bihar is seen as serious about sports now.”
Today, every player strives for victory, and according to Karunesh Kumar, this shift can be attributed to a crucial policy change. Previously, players could qualify for government jobs simply by participating in national-level tournaments. This approach proved counterproductive, as players prioritised meeting participation requirements over achieving medals. Now, government sports quota jobs are exclusively awarded to medallists, incentivising victory rather than mere participation.
Cracks in the system
Bihar’s ambition to become a sporting powerhouse is hindered by systemic cracks—corruption, uneven access to infrastructure, and inefficient resource allocation.
Over the years, allegations of corruption and malfeasance have frequently surfaced, particularly in cricket. Last year, for instance, JD-U MLA Sanjiv Kumar accused the Bihar Cricket Association (BCA) president of taking bribes of Rs 40-50 lakh to select players from other states in the Bihar Ranji team. In August this year, the Patna High Court also pulled up the BCA for its “brazen violation” of rules.
“Substandard selectors are appointed who select meritless players which results in giving bad names to the state,” the court said.
There needs to be coordination between the federations, associations, academies, and the state. To aim for the 2032 and 2036 Olympics, all stakeholders need to come together. Talent and coordination is what will help Bihar
-Eric Hollingsworth, high performance director for the Vijayi Bharat Sports Academy
Corruption has also infiltrated other areas, such as equipment procurement, stadium maintenance, and the distribution of funds for athlete welfare. A major scandal in 2012 saw the Bihar State Sports Authority allege widespread corruption in a central sports scheme aimed at promoting village sports, with many bills submitted by the Patna District Sports Officer found to be fake.
“Funds are seldom spent on players. Sports funds are embezzled by producing fake bills. Such things can only hurt the morale of players,” wrote former BSSA DG Ashok Kumar Seth in his report.
There are also concerns about the allocation of resources. While Bihar has invited applications from coaches outside the state, it has yet to fully capitalise on its homegrown talent.
A top fencer with over 20 medals to her name said under condition of anonymity said she spends most of her time on clerical work.
“It would have been better if I had continued as a coach. That way my skills would have been of some use for the state,” said the fencer who is now in her 30s.
Ramashankar Prasad, secretary of the Bihar Fencing Association and a distillery owner in Gopalganj district, has supported Bihar’s fencing community for three decades by funding equipment, travel, and tournament fees. He questioned the logic of sidelining experienced players.
“Why not use these first-generation players to inspire and train the new crop of athletes?” asked Prasad who runs a distillery in Gopalganj district.
Another challenge is the urban-rural divide in sports infrastructure. The top stadiums in Rajgir and Patna mostly serve urban athletes, while rural players rely on makeshift grounds. Rugby player Arti Kumar trained on a defunct sugar mill ground in Warisaliganj. Fencing prodigy Keshar Raj, trained on a paddy field in East Champaran. Sepak takraw champion Pooja Kumari practiced in a neglected public park.
Even where infrastructure exists, upkeep is poor. Bihar’s only international cricket stadium, Moin-ul-Haq Stadium in Patna, hosted its first cricket match—the Ranji Trophy— in 27 years in January 2024. It drew ridicule for its overgrown grass, rusted railings, and a non-functional scoreboard. The backlash prompted the Bihar Cricket Association to sign an MoU with BCCI, handing over control of the stadium for 30 years. But as Prasad pointed out, isolated upgrades aren’t enough.
“A three-storey building can’t accommodate the needs of Bihar’s sports community,” he said, referring to the Khel Bhawan initiative meant to provide training space across districts.
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Rising up to the competition
Bihar is going all in to host big-ticket sports events and show India it’s ready for the big leagues. The 2025 Khelo India National Games, the Asia Women’s Kabaddi Championship, the World Sepak Takraw Championships, and the Men’s Hockey Asia Cup are all on the calendar.
“The more they host, the more popular the sport gets among the residents of Bihar,” said Krishan Kumar of Khelo India.
But big events come with big expectations. While other states secure private sponsors for marquee tournaments, Bihar still leans heavily on government funding.
“If they invite world-class players to host tournaments, they have to provide quality equipment, accommodation, and other facilities. It will ultimately benefit local talent,” said J&K Khelo India member and former fencer Rashid Ahmed Chaudhary, who was competition director for the 32nd Fencing Championship. He also cited an incident where a Rs 400 glove was used instead of premium-quality gear.
While high-profile tournaments boost visibility, Prasad warns that Bihar shouldn’t get too comfortable.
“The state is happy to host the Khelo India National Games in 2025. But these games have been successfully hosted by smaller states too,” he said.
Tournaments alone won’t send Bihar’s players to the Olympics. As Krishan Kumar put it, the state faces three big hurdles: infrastructure, competition, and coaching.
“Bihar is competing in high-medal-tally sports like fencing, archery, and shooting, which are also priorities for other sports-dominant states. Everyone is doing it. So Bihar needs to level up, he said adding that there’s still a paucity of trained coaches who can build sports participation from the ground up.
Outside experts agree. Eric Hollingsworth, former head coach of Athletics Australia, visited Bihar as part of a talent-scouting drive for Ahmedabad’s Vijayi Bharat Sports Academy. He was “impressed” by the facilities but cautioned that infrastructure alone isn’t enough.
“We can’t just have concrete infrastructure — there needs to be coordination between the federations, associations, academies, and the state,” he said. “To aim for the 2032 and 2036 Olympics, all stakeholders need to come together. Talent and coordination is what will help Bihar.”
‘It’s not instant coffee’
The first thing that stands out at the Patliputra Sports Complex are the towering murals of Olympians like Neeraj Chopra and Sakshi Malik, with bold Hindi slogans calling for action and grit.
But just as striking are the smaller posters of Bihar’s own rising stars —Sundar Kumari, one of the best kabaddi raiders; Akash Kumar, an international fencing gold medallist; fencer Keshar Raj; volleyball players Anuj Kumar Singh; and javelin ace Anjani Kumari.
Their faces aren’t yet famous, but slowly and steadily, they are being noticed.
“Bihar’s team is very competitive,” said 16-year-old Kerala fencer Aditya Girish at the 32nd National Junior Fencing Championship. His teammates Prithvi S and Amrithaprasadi, dressed in red-and-black tracksuits, nodded in agreement.
Their conversation caught the ear of Mukesh Kumar, a technical officer at the event. For him, it was a flashback to the 1995 championship at the Gandhi Krishna Memorial Hall in Patna when he was a 14-year-old fencer. Resources were scarce, but that year, Bihar’s players still managed to win a bronze medal.
“We are the first generation of fencing players in Bihar. We had no electric equipment, no fencing shoes, and no podium,” said Kumar, recalling that barely a dozen teams participated back then.
“To now see Bihar organise a fencing tournament like this, with 28 states participating, is a proud moment for us,” he said, his eyes welling up.
The transformation is also deeply personal for Indian women’s hockey team coach Harendra Singh, who grew up in Banwar village, Chhapra district. Back in 2012, he had to seek help from JD(U) leader Sanjay Jha to get electricity to his village.
“I waited 28 long years to witness what Bihar achieved in Rajgir. I never imagined Bihar would even hold school nationals. To see it host an international championship was not just a moment of pride but extremely emotional,” he said.
For Singh, a former Indian hockey player and Dronacharya awardee, Bihar’s progress — and where it still lags — has to be seen in context.
“Bihar’s approach to reach the mass to find class (talent) is good. Sports results take time. It’s not like instant coffee. What Bihar needs now is patience,” he said. “Bihar’s competition is with its past. It shouldn’t replicate other states’ sports models.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Swimming is a natural talent in Bihari communities living on River banks. Swimming competitions in 10- 12 year olds can also help in identifying potential Olympians.