IT is said that the discovery of the sport CHESS(shatranj) was done by the Indian ancestors. The current form of this mind board game was evolved in 15th century from Indian and Persian form of the game then it was modernised by the Europians and mastered by the russians.Inspite of being in the root of this ancient game why there is only less than 80 thousand spectators out of 140 cr. people country in the international event held in 2020? Compared to the other sports in India like cricket, hockey, football, badminton and kabaddi chess is far lower in the list of the attendees in any event.
According to the recent study about the chess by a team of scientists from Germany, Netherlands and USA that It requires cognitive skills like perception, memory and problem solving to play it and understand it to the extent of seeking enjoyment out of it.So it demands onces concentration at the time of seeing it unlike the other sports, May be that is the fundamental cause which leads the sport to the lower bars.The person with the good reasoning and tactical mindset are find chess very interesting and enjoying as well. Till this date there are only 30 thousand players who have registered their name to the FIDE(international chess federation) and 4 players are in the top 100 chess players of the world. Which is too small if we look at our history in chess.In 1985 we got our very first GM(grand master) Vishwanathan Anand after that till we have other 69 grand masters.
From the last 7 years no Arjuna award has been given to the chess players. There are no incentives or programs as such for the players. Most players are either supported by the community crowdfunding or from the fue supporters of the game and chess enthusiasts of youtube. Inshort there is no such plan for making this sport more accessible to the newcomers from the gov. We can say it is only live by the chess community of emerging players and the fue lovers game,there is so much scope to improve our infrastructure for the game of chess. like in Russia, the subject chess is being taught to the interested students.We can totally see their marks in the history of chess as every 3rd world chess champion is from Russia.
In recent times of global pandemic the popularity of chess has been raising specially in our country,because of the streaming of chess online at the multiple platforms such as Youtube and Twitch.The credit of rising chess popularity is definitely should be given to the Chessbase India,Samay Raina and Vidit Gujarathi along with many more chess streamers.But from the structural point of view for the chess there is lot to be done.
