Sports play a significant role in healthy social development and interaction. It helps people learn how to set and achieve goals through discipline and hard work. It nurtures the development of decision-making and leadership abilities, while teaching people to manage both success and failure. Today, it has become one of the most popular activities being organised at regular intervals. In it’s true sense, sports means much more than just to compete in a few events organised at certain intervals for the highest honour of one’s state/country.
Sports is a human activity that contributes to the holistic development of individuals. It is recognised as an individual activity which offers the opportunity for self-knowledge, selfexpression and fulfilment of personal achievement; skill acquisition and demonstration of ability; enjoyment, good health and well-being. Sports also engages us in a collective effort to pursue human excellence. It provides us an opportunity for social interaction. It is a source of pleasure, but more than that, sports inspires, brings cultures together, and can bridge social divides. Sports can enrich society and foster friendships between nations. Sports is also responsible for the application of rules and for adherence to values such as mutual respect, solidarity and fair play.
Sports today, faces the pressures of modern society and new challenges. When sports events like Olympic games, Common-Wealth Games, Asian Games or those related to Cricket, Football, Volleyball, Tennis, Hockey or Badminton take place, millions of spectators, viewers on television, internet or listeners on radio become intensely engaged even though a selected few participate.
Sports is primarily a competitive activity where winning is the be all and end all. Do you agree with this statement? Perhaps that is why, in this highly competitive sports environment, we quite often hear about unethical behaviour which includes cheating, bending the rules, doping, abuse of food additives, physical and verbal violence, harassment, sexual abuse and trafficking of young sportspersons, discrimination, exploitation, unequal opportunities, unethical sports practices, unfair means, excessive commercialisation, use of drugs in sports and corruption.
These are just a few examples of what may go wrong with sports. There is not just one reason for these, part of the problem is that people ignore ethics while making decisions. It is in this context that ethics occupy a critical place. In the present chapter we shall discuss various dimensions of sports ethics.
