Popular street sports like 'gulel' (slingshot) and 'gilli danda' (tip cat) will be the flavour of a cultural and sports festival being organised by the Bihar government next month.

The event 'Tarang: Art and Sports Festival (2023-24), which is being organised by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), from October 21 to 22 in Patna, aims to provide a platform for children from all over Bihar to showcase their skills in indigenous sports.

The SCERT is the apex academic body in the state for school and teacher education and is a wing of the education department.

Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Education department, S Siddharth told PTI, "The idea is to simply promote traditional games in schools. The idea is also to make sports more inclusive at the school level. These traditional games—'gulel' and gilli danda--are less resource intensive and will encourage creativity among students." This is the reason the SCERT decided to organise a state-level event for these traditional sports, he said.

"There should be multi-dimensional growth of students. The approach should be 360 degree growth of a student. Education should not be limited to books only. We are confident that organizing a state-level sporting event for these traditional games will encourage outdoor play and physical activity among the students," the ACS said.

Commenting on this, Emteyaz Alam, in charge of department of Physical Education, Art and Craft, said, "These are the games which have great recreational value, gives enough exercise to the body and mind of a student. Traditional games can be used as learning tools to help children develop their cognitive, language, social and physical abilities as well." Jainendra Dost, Lecturer in department of Physical Education, Art and Craft, told PTI, "These games are fastly dwindling as the present generation hardly knows about native games. These games have great recreational value, it will give enough exercise to the body and mind of a student. Such events can be organised at national and international levels also. Around 1,000 selected students from different government schools across the state will participate during the two-day festival next month." "Besides, 400 students will participate in the state-level completion of art form. The SCERT has already sent a letter to principals of all College of Teacher Education (CTE), District Institute for Education and Training (DIET), Primary Teacher Education College (PTEC), Block Institute for Education and Training (BIET) and other officials concerned for bringing the selected students from their respective areas to Patna next month," said Dost.

Vidyarthi Vikas, Assistant Professor (Economics), A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies (Patna) said, "The department's initiative to promote traditional games is highly commendable. The government should form a committee to identify other popular traditional games and players in all districts in the state…and further provide infrastructure for players.

"The government must open a big stadium/ground in every district in the state especially for traditional games in each district and find-out talents and provide them training. Bihar has an abundance of talents in traditional games."

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