Notably, such responses were not confined to men. The study highlighted that nearly one in two respondents thought that sportswomen should look attractive, and women were more likely than men to agree with this statement.
The findings indicated only a modest improvement in the proportion of Indians playing sports overall, across all disciplines, in the fourteen states covered. Even as 74% of Indians in the study (up from 69% in 2020) said that they played games or sport as children, only half of them said they continued to do so as adults.
Two-thirds of the respondents said that they did not participate in any sport because of time constraints.
Methodology:
The 2026 survey was conducted by Kantar India, who also ran the 2020 study. The project interviewed 10,304 people aged 15 years and up across 14 Indian states. The sample aimed to represent all 14 states surveyed in terms of age, gender, socio-economic class and rural/urban locations. The survey questionnaire administered remained the same with the exception of a few questions being added; as did the survey’s sampling methodology, so that the two studies remained comparable.
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