The Indian government has announced a strategy to get the country’s much-criticised officials to relax, stay healthy and work more productively: free yoga classes.
In what may well be the biggest campaign of physical education based on the ancient Indian discipline ever, Delhi said on Friday it would provide daily yoga lessons to 3 million civil servants and their families.
It is unclear whether the classes are to be compulsory but there is likely to be considerable pressure on bureaucrats to attend.
The move was welcomed by Suneel Singh, a yoga guru in Delhi, who said it would improve the health and thus performance of babus, as civil servants are known.
“They will be more in touch with their breathing and their bodies,” Singh said.
The prime minister, Narendra Modi, is an enthusiastic practitioner of yoga and starts every day with an hour’s exercise. He has created a separate ministry to promote yoga, as well as a range of traditional medicines, and called on the international community to adopt an international yoga day when he addressed the United Nations in New York last year.
Officials have already signalled the introduction of compulsory yoga for India’s famously out-of-shape police officers.
Shripad Yesso Naik, minister of state for yoga and traditional medicines (ayurveda, naturopathy, unani and homoeopathy), has already announced plans to introduce daily practice sessions of the 2,000-year-old discipline for all
police officers, paramilitary personnel and defence staff over the next three to five years.
“Training is going on in full swing at the national centre for yoga. If police departments, for instance, ask for 10,000 trainers, they will be provided,” he told reporters.
More controversially, senior politicians in India have suggested more widespread practice of yoga could bring down levels of sexual violence in the country.
“I believe if yoga comes into the life of common people, then the daily incidents of rape, I would not say they will cease to exist, but there will definitely be a decrease in them,” Murli Manohar Joshi, a senior figure in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said recently.
Singh said yoga had long been used by India’s most powerful figures both personally, and to boost the productivity of officialdom.
“Yoga is part and parcel of India’s heritage. Many bigshots like [Mahatma] Gandhi have been doing it,” he said.
