NSS Marks Gram Seva evam Parampragat Khel Diwas in Villages

The MY Bharat National Service Scheme, which works under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, held Gram Seva evam Parampragat Khel Diwas, a day of village service and traditional sports, as the sixth week of the Nasha Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat 100 Week Sankalp Abhiyan. The week carried the campaign out of classrooms and colleges and into rural neighbourhoods.

How far it reached

The Directorate of NSS ran the week with 15 NSS Regional Directorates. It was held at more than 160 institutions and in the villages they have adopted, and over 80,000 people joined in, among them students and other young people, members of Gram Panchayats, village elders and local residents. The activities sat under the theme set for the campaign’s second month, Fit Youth, Addiction-Free Youth (Shakti evam Seva), which ties physical fitness and community work to the idea of a substance-free society.

Traditional sports on the village ground

NSS units put together local tournaments in kabaddi, kho-kho, tug of war and kushti, the indigenous games a village plays without equipment or a stadium. More than 21,500 people took part in them, and the purpose was plain: give rural youth healthy recreation and teamwork to put their time into.

What the Gram Seva half did

On the service side, NSS volunteers worked with Gram Panchayats on jobs the village can see the result of, such as cleaning lanes, sanitation around public wells and handpumps, and planting saplings. These drew more than 19,800 participants, and the release reads the effort against the NSS motto, Not Me, But You. Community awareness programmes and youth-led dialogues on healthy living and the anti-drug campaign reached over 18,600 people.

Women and the online push

More than 29,500 young women took part across the sporting and service activities, which the ministry offers as a mark of the week’s stress on including both sexes. To widen the audience beyond the villages themselves, participants put out over 4,000 social media posts carrying the hashtag NashaMuktYuva. The ministry’s own reading of week six is that it tightened the link between educational institutions and the villages around them, in the direction of a Nasha Mukt Viksit Bharat.