Sports and games are for improving one's physical fitness and for recreation. What is the present position of these activities? For those who cannot earn money by doing some constructive activity, it has now become a way of amassing wealth. The media is also abetting this phenomenon for its own selfish ends by making it a show business. Lot of money and time is wasted which can be utilised for some social emancipation activities.When millions live in poverty it is a grave mistake to pay millions and costly rewards to sports persons.While simple methods are enough for improving physical fitness, constructing huge stadia and artificial turfs in the guise of promoting sports is a folly. Let the society become saner

Dear Ezhil,

I believe that competitive sports are used by governments to direct the frustration and anger of people away from themselves, onto the opponent teams instead. Also to help create a national identity by seducing people to identify with their national teams. From their perspective, it's a useful exercise in reducing the intelligence of the population and depriving them of free time, which could be used to revolt.

I am a bit perplexed by this combination of words: "social emancipation", which you seem to suggest as an alternative. From Merriam-Webster, to 'emancipate' means:

1: to free from restraint, control, or the power of another; especially : to free from bondage
2: to release from paternal care and responsibility and make sui juris
3: to free from any controlling influence (as traditional mores or beliefs)

To be in a society, one has to sacrifice some of their freedoms (nothing wrong with it if one joins that society voluntarily), thus 'social' and 'emancipated' seems a dichotomy.

When millions live in poverty it is also a grave mistake to pay millions and costly rewards for people to make children which would render them even poorer.

A lot of time and money is indeed spend on sport but that is because people *chose* to spend it thus. Ezhil, this may come as a shock to you, but you don't have to (ie., you are not penalised in anyway if you don't) spend neither your money nor your time on sport. Indeed, if you really want to you can voluntarily give away all your assets and devote your life to charity (indeed people do). However, if you believe in concept of individual freedoms then you shouldn't complain when people choose not to give their money away. You seem to be promoting the idea of some totalitarian society which severely restricts our freedom of choice even more than it currently is.

By-the-way: anyone who works and pays tax is already forced to give a substantial slice of their earning to charity. Some people pay more than 60% of their income in tax and excises. Of all the taxes collected at least half goes to charity (ie: health care, social security, education, etc.). On the whole, as a society, we are very, very charitable- more so than most non-western countries that don't have the sophisticated sports and entertainment industries that we do.