When the Maidans disappear, where does the nation go to play?

Palika Stadium in Kanpur in 2018. Maidans may be one of the most democratic institutions our world has invented without ever intending to. Maidan doesn’t care much about your last name, your class, or whether you can afford a club membership. If you have a bat, you can play. If you don’t, you can stand on the edge and end up being drawn into the game.Not all sports facilities work this way. A sports academy or private indoor sports arena has a certain kind of exclusivity and a membership fee. Maidan has a different logic. The rich and the poor may occupy the same turf, even if they do not live the same life outside it.Maidans are a public affair. Public common spaces are places that belong to everyone and at the same time to no one.All over the country, however, these maidans were shrinking. They are being converted into sports grounds with an entrance fee, congress centers, wedding halls, parking lots and exhibition grounds. Some changes improve the device. Others simply make it inaccessible to ordinary people.

Maidan Republic

Fifteen or twenty years ago, if you walked through Arya Nagar, one of the bustling neighborhoods in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, you would have witnessed hundreds of people engaged in sporting activities.Surrounding the area known as Brijendra Swaroop Park were five large public maidans, each roughly 100-150 meters wide and nearly 200 meters long. Children and adults, mostly men, played cricket and other sports, flew kites or stood around watching the matches. Several matches could be played simultaneously on weekends.Sports culture reigned around the Maidans. By 2026, most of this space has disappeared or become inaccessible for normal people to play.What remains is either behind walls, occupied by newly built buildings, or reduced to small patches that are difficult to use for sports.Of the five maidans, one was walled and had a grassy ground, but remained open to the public. It was known as Palika Stadium.The ground was large enough to host two cricket matches simultaneously – one on a mat wicket and the other on a proper grass wicket. There was also a cricket academy running there for a monthly fee that was affordable to the players.The stadium was used not only for cricket. It had a basketball court and an indoor area where chess and carom tournaments were held. Schools in the area also used it for their annual sports events.The land next to the Palika Stadium was converted into a park more than a decade ago and named Parashuram Vatika. It has proper sidewalks for people who come for morning and evening walks.This change was needed and the park has become a space that is regularly used especially by older people.The Palika Stadium itself, which stands on Kanpur Nagar Nigam land, has been divided into two parts.One half now houses an air-conditioned multi-purpose indoor sports complex with facilities including table tennis and swimming. Membership costs range from Rs 2,500 per month to over Rs 75,000 per year.The other half has a cricket pitch and floodlit academy. The Kanpur Municipal Corporation built the facility through a public-private partnership and it is now managed by a private enterprise.However, the cricket academy fee has increased several times since the new facility was built. More importantly, the stadium is no longer open to the public.People can only use it if they book the stadium for matches. The rental price ranges from Rs 12,000 to Rs 85,000 per match.

From open maidans to wedding halls and exhibitions

The other three maidans opposite the Palika Stadium tell a more tragic story.There were three plots of land in front of Palika Stadium, separated by roads. For almost ten years, one of them was used to store sewer pipes that were to be installed throughout the city. Around 2010, he became unavailable for sports activities.This land now houses the Kanpur Municipal Corporation’s ‘Mangal Bhavan Baarat Shaala’, a venue that offers space for marriages and other ceremonies for a fee.Another lot was largely surrounded by a wall. During the year it is used for exhibitions and shows. It is still accessible to the public, but its condition no longer suits most sports activities.The only remaining space that can still be used for some kind of sport is a roughly 50m x 50m patch next to the walled terrain.The area, which once had several plots, each hundreds of meters wide and stretching almost 200 meters, has been reduced to a small fraction of the original sports area. The remaining space is not in good shape either.

Who does Maidan belong to?

The disappearance of open sports spaces is not limited to Kanpur. About 20 km away, in neighboring Unnao district, the Ram Leela ground near Hiran Nagar was also once used for sports.Today, local carriers and tempos regularly park on and around the ground, making it difficult to use the space for sports activities.The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in Mumbai has recently proposed converting the Neville D’Souza Football Ground at Bandra Reclamation into an exhibition or convention centre. Hundreds of football players, coaches, parents, students and citizens rallied last week against the proposal. On Thursday, the Bombay High Court stayed the BMC’s makeover plan for the time being.“Are you going to tell us where people will play football?” asked the Bombay High Court while staying the BMC’s move.Mumbai has lost many of its maidans over the years. On Sunday, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and MLA Aaditya Thackeray alleged that reservations for 17 maidans and other open spaces in Mumbai have been altered and converted for commercial or residential purposes.The pattern is similar in several cities.Land that was once intended for sports becomes a parking lot, a place for weddings, an exhibition center or a place for public events. In some cases, the space technically remains open to the public, but is occupied for several weeks or months each year.

The Making of a Sporting Nation: Without Maidans?

The Union Budget 2026–27 has allocated Rs 4,479.88 crore to the Sports Ministry. Earlier this month, the Union government approved an outlay of Rs 29,054 crore for the Khelo India program for 2026-2031, along with Rs 7,387 crore for the Assistance to National Sports Federations (ANSF) programme. The central government has also earmarked a component of Rs 565 crore for states to dip into to share the cost of future sports infrastructure development projects in the five-year plan.India needs more stadiums, indoor halls, swimming pools and courts. These facilities are important for training professional athletes and organizing competitions. They help produce players who can win medals and trophies.But a sporting nation cannot be built solely through facilities to which someone has to pay to enter.Maidans serve a different purpose and play a big role in creating sports culture. The arenas are often where these future professional athletes first kick a ball or pick up a bat. Maidan is the center of amateur sports; people who don’t want to play sports at a professional level. They only play sports for the love of the game.Sports culture grows in open spaces that belong to everyone, not just inside academies or big sports arenas. Open public virgins make the sport an affordable thing.When these maidans disappear, sport becomes something that increasingly needs money or access to a private facility.During the ‘Khelo India Dialogue’ on Thursday, he urged the youth to choose “playgrounds over playstations”.“Sports centers are more important than screens. Playgrounds are more important than PlayStations. And that will only happen if the youth adopts this approach,” PM Modi said.With the country celebrating National Sports Day on Saturday, so youngsters can choose their playground over the PlayStation, there must first be a playground left for them to choose from.