Dear chess friends ,

Greetings

The Chess in School Conference at New Delhi was a huge success and its time to take the initiative forward.

In the history of AICF yet, this is one of the biggest challenge we face. As a community responsible to promote chess in the country, I feel its our duty to work diligently on the project and see its fruition not only in

terms of making India the number one chess playing nation in the world but also towards building a better ‘future generation’ which is an automated process as you are well aware.

I have worked a lot on the project and it seems we need to kick off with a plan across India with funds that have to be duly spent. The plan is to start with allocating 10 Lakh each to all our associates. Our total budget

is Rs. 3.3 Crore in the first year with a target to achieve 100000 more registered players under AICF umbrella.

One year will hardly be enough so we would like to make it a three-year project. At the end of the third year the projections are to have 5 Lakh registered players in AICF which means we will have a net revenue of Rs.

12.5 Crores coming out from registration fee alone. Add to this the number of tournaments that will increase and the revenue associated with it. We will surely get sponsorship deals too which means we can support

training hugely at all levels across the country.

To sum it up: This is a great opportunity that should be welcomed with both hands. Here under I am giving you the related plan.

The Chess in School Program of AICF: The Immediate Decisions we need to take to make it kick off!

1. This is obviously the most ambitious plan for us in AICF. If this program kicks off in a big way, Chess in our country has the potential to be in the same league as Tennis or Badminton.

2. What we need is widespread recognition and touching every nook and corner in the country to make children learn and play chess. This is going to require a humongous effort and planning but first we need to take it at level one.

3. After our very successful CIS seminar which was attended widely by Associations and experts on the subjects in New Delhi it seems that we do not currently have the required resources to make it happen on a huge platform. This easily means we need to have a corpus of may be 50 Crores and complete Govt. support to make it happen. Currently we have none.

4. The plan B is to launch this as a pilot project which is easier, simpler and, most importantly, doable.

5. The plan entails aiding our affiliates to run a pilot project in each of our States/UTs.

6. We will fund each of our affiliates with Rs. 1000000/- (Ten Lakh) to run the pilot project..

7. In this project the State Association will be liable to include between 15-20 schools depending on the area, population etc. For example, Madhya Pradesh will have to ensure it runs in 20 schools while for smaller states like Arunachal Pradesh it could be ten schools.

8. The 10 Lakh will be spent only on office space for each affiliate, digitization, one staff and equipment. Every State association beneficial of this scheme will have to have all districts as their respective affiliates. Also this fund will increase every year if we keep meeting our targets.

9. Each affiliate benefiting from this scheme has to organize minimum two FIDE rated school events in the first year.

10. Our target for the first year is to add 100000 New AICF registrations. Which means 2.5 Crore coming back. Our total expense here is 3.3 Crore in the first year as we have 33 affiliates. In the coming three years we want to have at least 500000 registered players in AICF which would mean a net inflow of Rs. 12.5 Crores through registrations alone.

Our State Associations do not have much support and this is why in most parts of country we do not have events and also very few children play the game. As the parent association of State affiliates, it is our responsibility to serve the State associations and to help them to become self-sufficient. This will be surely possible under this scheme as if each affiliate will add huge number of players, it is only going to help them.
Message from Bharat Singh Chauhan, Secretary, AICF
Feedback and suggestions are welcome ….