Government of India

Report on My Life My Yoga Contest -2020

1. Introduction

The sixth International Day of Yoga i.e. IDY 2020 was observed on the 21st of June 2020. The Ministry of AYUSH as the nodal Ministry for this observance, ensured that a variety of promotional activities preceded the same. However, unlike previous years, majority of the promotional activities were carried out on the digital media, in view of the limitations enforced by the Covid 19 pandemic. ‘Yoga at Home, Yoga with Family’ was adopted as the theme for IDY 2020 due to stringent restrictions on mass gatherings arising from the contagious nature of COVID-19. Consequently, the Ministry of AYUSH (MoA), Government of India (GoI) had encouraged the people to observe IDY 2020 at home with their families; and had made provisions for the event to be conducted digitally.

To raise awareness about Yoga and to inspire people to prepare for and become active participants in the observation of IDY 2020 on 21st June 2020, a video blogging - “My Life My Yoga” - contest was announced by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat address on 31st May 2020. The contest was administered by the Ministry of AYUSH in collaboration with the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR). To encourage more and more people to join in from their home (and through it to observe IDY event), attractive prizes for the winners of the contest were also announced. People across globe were provisioned to take part in this contest by simply uploading a 3-mins video of themselves performing their favourite Yogasanas i.e. Yoga postures/poses. For the ease of participants and to reach out the larger masses, Ministry accepted entries through social medial platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also through the MyGov platform of Government of India and the Contest Portal of the Ministry of AYUSH.

The competition was divided into 2 stages, one at the country-level and the other one at the global level. The entry process of this contest spanned over almost 3 weeks starting from 31st May 2020 till 21st June 2020 11:59 PM IST and it turned out to be the one of the largest video competitions ever held on an online platform.

2. MLMY Outreach Estimates

To make any event successful, awareness creation is important. To generate the awareness about the MLMY video blogging competition, the Ministry tried to tap onto very possible channel in order to spread the word to maximum number of people. The launch announcement by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his Mann Ki Baat address on 31st May 2020 gave a an inspiring start to this event. Thereafter, Ministry went onto promote this competition vigorously through digital as well as offline modes.

With regards to the online promotions, various initiatives and campaigns were launched to spread across the information of MLMY contest. These campaigns included vigorous promotion on social media platforms, creation of a dedicated MLMY contest page on the Ministry website, dedicated landing pageonMy Gov channel whereas the offline activities included 3 press releases which were posed every month namely and direct communication sent to various stakeholders such as health and wellness centres, MDNIY, NIN etc. The 3 press releases included: (a) ‘Prime Minister announces "My Life My Yoga" Video Blogging contest in Mann Ki Baat’ released on 31st May 2020, (b) ‘ Submission Deadline for the ‘My Life, My Yoga’ Video Blogging Contest extended till 21st June, 2020’ released on 13th June 2020 (c) ‘AYUSH Ministry announces the names of the winners of ‘My Life – My Yoga’ Video Blogging Contest’ posted on 14th July 2020

Such promotions on a grand scale level led to over140 million total impressions, 2.2 million engagement and 3.3 million video views for the video blogging competition worldwide.

Figure 1: Outreach through different modes

With over 164 million of total outreach, 88% were through digital modes that included social media (twitter, Facebook, Instagram), dedicated MLMY contest page, MyGov platform and the You Tube views on Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s Mann ki Baat speech on 31st May 2020 where he spoke about International Day of Yoga and inaugurated the My Life My Yoga video blogging competition and encouraged people to take part in it from their homes with their family.

The effective outreach through each platform is detailed in the below table:

Table 1: Estimates for Outreach engagement for MLMY contest

S. No.	Stakeholders/Organizations	Effective Outreach (Individuals in Thousand)
Digital Media Outreach1
01	Social Media Outreach – Twitter	10,000
02	Social Media Outreach – Facebook	110,000
03	Social Media Outreach – Instagram	24,000
04	MLMY Contest Page	290
05	Mann ki Baat Speech(31st May 2020)	1,100
Print Media Outreach
06	Press Releases and Interaction with Journalists	11
Direct Outreach by the Ministry, MDNIY, NIN & CCRYN
07	Health & Wellness Centres	380
08	Common Service Centres	1,613
09	Outreach through Nodal Officers
	Uniformed Central Forces	1,061
	Units of Central Ministries Departments	1,819
	Units of State Ministries Departments	2,052
10	NIN direct outreach	2,000
11	MDNIY direct outreach	72
12	International Naturopathy Organization	10,000
13	SDM Colleges	96
Total		164,494
Total (In mn)		164

Methodology for estimation:

1. This estimate includes outreach done through various social media channels (Facebook, Instagram & Twitter). These numbers are likely to have included some international outreach as well given social media efforts transcend boundaries and provide open access to all.

2. Information for social media platforms and MLMY Contest page have been collected using various digital resources such as analytics platforms and numbers collated by the platforms themselves.

3. The outreach estimation for Mann ki Baat speech is on the basis of the YouTube video uploaded of the speech titled “PM Modi interacts with the Nation in Mann ki Baat | 31st May 2020 | PMO” posted by PMO India handle as on 24th July 2020.

4. As for press releases, there were 3 press releases made for MLMY contest. The outreach estimate numbers are based on the matrices maintained by PIB which is also displayed on each press release as visitor count.

5. The autonomous institutes of Ministry – NIN, MDNIY held extensive stakeholder consultations to enlist participation of specific strategic partners that enabled participation to MLMY contest from large stakeholder groups and enabled the message to reach leading yoga institutes and colleges. Thus, IDY participation numbers are assumed to be the outreach for MLMY contest as all such stakeholders were reached out to.

6. With the assumption that the numbers of people that took part in the IDY 2020 event from the stakeholder categories of Nodal officers, Health and wellness centres, common service centres and SDM colleges were at least tapped on in the outreach and awareness generation campaigns for MLMY.

7. Estimates for International Naturopathy Organization (INO) has been taken from data provided by NIN Pune

3. MLMY Participation

My Life My Yoga contest emerged to become one of the largest video competitions ever held in India observed a great outreach to the masses and as a result the number of participations from across globe were huge as well. The Ministry entertained entries from social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and also through the MyGov platform of Government of India and the Contest Portal of the Ministry of AYUSH. Indian missions abroad were also provisioned to add entries to their respective participants list which they receive directly.

Out of the total of 39,866entries across the globe that Ministry received, 37,333were from India.Though official figures of participation in similar video blogging competitions in India are not available, information available in public domain indicates that there never was more than 5000 entries in any such video competition. Further, in MLMY contest the participation came in from around 130 countries which shows the effectiveness of outreach and awareness activities. It was also observed that creating a dedicated contest page for MLMY made a huge impact in the number of participants as maximum number of entries came in through contest page platform.

The platform-wise breakup of participation numbers is given below:

Figure 2:MLMY Contest Participation Breakup

Participants could send their entries through the dedicated platforms only. The deadline for sending in the videos for the completion was 21st June 2020 11:59 PM IST post which no entries were considered for the contest. The evaluation process for the contest started from the next day i.e., 22nd June 2020 itself. The details of the evaluation process are provided in the next section of this report.

4. Evaluation Process

Figure 3: Evaluation Process Flow for country winners

The competition was divided into 6 categories with separate male and female divisions in each:

1. Youth below 18 years

2. Adult 18 years and above

3. Yoga Professionals.

The evaluation process was facilitated by The Ministry of AYUSH and the Indian Missions in the respective countries. The IT team of the Ministry of AYUSH centrally compiled the data about all the entries received globally on identified platforms. Once all the entries were received, they were then segregated on the country of participation and were sent to each Indian Mission of the respective country for evaluation and finalisation of winners. Several Advisories were also sent on a regular basis to all Indian Missions with the details about the contest and the general process to be followed for evaluation.

For the evaluation to take place, a screening committee was formed consisting of 148 members (yoga experts). The task of the screening committee was to shortlist entries by scoring videos on a scale of 1 to 10 for various parameters that were predefined by the Ministry. These parameters are also mentioned in the table below. Then the top 20 entries in each category were reviewed by a Jury consisting of 3 panels of 5 jurors each. This evaluation process and criteria was also shared with the Indian missions abroad and were advised to adopt this process. They were also advised to directly have a panel to have an efficient evaluation process as the number of entries from each country were not very huge.

Table 2: Evaluation Criteria

S.No	Characteristics/ Definition of attributes	Marks
		1	3	5
1	Theme- The postures done should align with the reasons they give at the end for doing this practice	No Theme	Not Related	Thematic
2	Poise/ grace- The asanas should be done effortlessly and should have a sequence and flow	None	Somewhat	Graceful
3	Difficulty level (for age)- One should take note of the persons condition –age, physique, disability etc and judge the difficulty level.	Beginner	Intermediate	Advanced
4	Easing into asana- One should assess if the participant can go to the final position easily, without adjustments and corrections.	Difficult	Slightly difficult	Easy
5	Correct position of Yogasana- Is the participant doing the posture that he has mentioned	No	Near	Correct
6	Perfection in final position (balance, retention)- Is the participant able to maintain the final position.	No	Near	Perfect
7	Stillness in the pose- Is the participant able to maintain stillness in final pose.	No	Somewhat Still	Still
8	Breathing- is the participant able to maintain the pose with relaxed breathing.	Erratic	With effort	Effortless
9	Ambience in surrounding- Place where asana is being done should be free from clutter and have good lighting, ventilation etc.	No	Less Ambient	Ambient
10	Videography skills- alignment of the camera, lighting, focus, background etc that adds aesthetics to a video.	Poor	Good	Very Good
	TOTAL SCORE = MIN=10 – MAX=50 ADDITIONAL MARKS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA =1-5

For countries with less than 10 entries, it was upto the jury of that country to decide whether the videos submitted were of good standard to be eligible for a prize. The jury and embassy of that respective country determined whether the prize can be awarded if the number of entries received from that country is less than 10. Also, they were given a provision to withdraw the prize if video entries were not of a standard quality, as decided by in any category. The jury members of Indian mission aboard were on boarded to the process by sharing login credentials to them on their shared email ids to access entries.

To ensure timely completion of the evaluation process, meetings were held on a daily basis with the screening committee. 10-12 meetings used to happen per day which continued for 2 weeks. Then to resolve the challenges faced by the missions abroad, regular calls were initiated.

Once the evaluation process was completed, Indian mission shared the winners’ details with Ministry of AYUSH to be announced on 15th July 2020. The winners were announced by Ministry of AYUSH and Indian missions of the respective country on their social media platforms and then the winners were contacted through such platforms to claim their prizes a well.

The next stage of the competition was the evaluation of global entries. The winners from each country went on to figure in the list of the entries for the global evaluation coordinated by the Ministry of AYUSH. There were 18 entries from India and around 652 entries from abroad. A pattern of 3 panels of jurors as in the case of evaluation of India country winners was adopted for the evaluation of the global winners also; however the jury consisted of a few Yoga experts from abroad as well in this case. One winner was to be selected from each category that was to be awarded with the prize money. Currently, a total of 8 Video conference meetings were held by the global panel to finalise their decisions.

5. Interim Winners (Country-level) Announcement

Since the competition was divided into 2 stages: country and global, the winners were also announced in similar way i.e., first the country level winners were announced and then the global level.

Indian Winners: Finalisation of the Indian winners was done by the jury panel of India that consisted of 2-3 members. Once the winners were decided, the same was communicated to the Ministry of AYUSH. After compilation of data, the announcement of country level winners was made on 15th July 2020 by Ministry of AYUSH.

Country specific prize for India were:

• First Prize – ₹1,00,000

• Second Prize - ₹50,000

• Third Prize – ₹25,000

The final list of winners across each category is included in table below:

CATEGORY	FIRST PRIZE	SECOND PRIZE	THIRD PRIZE
Youth (Male)	Pranay Sharma	Sunny Khelera	Kabilan Subramaniam
Youth (Female)	Navya S.H.	Avni Ramrakshani	Manvi Vyas
Adult (Male)	Rajpal Singh	Harshit Parihar	Nitin Tanaji Pawale
Adult (Female)	Shailee Prasad	Akanksha	Athistta U.B.
Professionals (Male)	Ashwath Hegde	H.A. Patel	Rishi Pal
Professionals (Female)	Rajni Kumari	Pooja Patel	Janvi Pratibha Mehta

Winners in countries other than India: The winners outside India were finalised by the jury from the respective country that was formed by the Indian missions. The whole contest and evaluation process was cover seen by ICCR. The missions were empowered to hold their own selection process (evaluation process of India was also shared with them to serve a reference point). It was upto the Indian Mission of the respective country to announce the country-specific winners and give away appropriate prizes. The information of winners is in the process of being compiled.

6. Final Evaluation - Global Winners

A total of 2533entries were received from overseas countries (out which 2292 were eligible to be evaluated), from 130 countries. Bangladesh, USA, Nepal, Bhutan and Canada were the leading countries in terms of participation. The following table gives the top 20 countries in terms of number of entries:

Sl No	Name of Country	No. of entries
1	Bangladesh	138
2	USA	126
3	Nepal	113
4	Bhutan	97
5	Canada	80
6	Oman	74
7	Russia	57
8	Malaysia	53
9	Singapore	53
10	Brazil	46
11	South Africa	46
12	Switzerland	46
13	Australia	45
14	UAE	45
15	Indonesia	42
16	Italy	42
17	Egypt	38
18	Mongolia	33
19	Mauritius	32
20	Japan	31

These entries were evaluated by respective embassies for the country prizes through yoga experts from their own station/country. A total of 624 country-winners were announced by all the Indian Missions together by 15th July 2020. In addition, there were 18 Indian winners announced by Ministry of AYUSH. Thus, a total of 642 candidates constituted the zone of consideration for the Global winners. As per contest rules18 global prizes were to be given away in six categories. Prize money announced for Global level winners (in each of the six categories) were:

• First Prize – US$ 2500/-

• Second Prize – US$ 1500/-

• Third Prize – US$ 1000/-

Three Jury panels were constituted for global entries for Youth (≤18 years), Adult >18 years and Professionals respectively, on a pattern similar to that adopted for Country evaluation for India. Each Jury team comprised 5 renowned yoga experts with at least one overseas member in each team. Each jury member was required to evaluate each shortlisted entry. Score for each entry was determined and the winner was finalised by the Chairperson of the Jury in consultation with the team.

The following is the list of Prize winners at the global level:

1. Category: Professional – Female

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	Rajni Gehlot	India	Rajnigehlot[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Pooja Patel	India	missworldyogini[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	Diana Carolina Chacon Munoz	Colombia	dianachacon22[at]gmail[dot]com

2. Category: Professional – Male

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	Ashwath Hegde	India	ashubalekoppa[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Chainga Dorji	Bhutan	chaingad[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	MarksimKarki Muthukrishnan	Oman	marximkarki[at]gmail[dot]com

3. Category: Adults – Female

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st Prize	Shailee Prasad	India	shaileeprsd[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	PhuntshoDema	Bhutan	deltshopk[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	Sally Nguyen	Singapore	ultimatecoolness[at]yahoo[dot]com.sg

4. Category: Adults –Male

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	Rajpal Singh Arya	India	aryarajpalsingh[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Hassan Issa	Syria	mhassanissa[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	Harshit Parihar	India	harshitparihar[at]gmail[dot]com

5. Category: Youth –Female

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	NavyaaSH	India	harishsn[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize*	Avni Ramrakshani	India	avni.leo[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize*	Shams Abdullah Ali Ragab Mohamed Butler	Egypt	Shamsbtlr255[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	Haripriya Sreenivasan	Saudi Arabia	sreenipoyil[at]hotmail[dot]com

* The Jury have recommended four prizes in the “Youth – Female” category, with two candidates bracketed for the 2nd prize.

6. Category: Youth – Male

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	Pranay Sharma	India	Prajju[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Sunny Khelera	India	sunnykhelera[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	MansifHelali	Bangladesh	mansifhelali[at]gmail[dot]com

7. Concluding Remarks

The My Life My Yoga video contest saw unprecedented participation from across the country and the globe. At a time when people of India and most other countries were experiencing the severe constraints of the lock-down situation, it provided the participants the opportunity to take up a meaningful activity with the possibility to reflect upon the current situation with equanimity. The participants recorded their performance of various yogasanas, highlighting the benefits of those asanas and sharing their personal experiences. This made a huge impact in helping people to define their own relationship with yoga, since for different people yoga played different roles in their respective lives. With this personal and reflective touch to the activity, the MLMY Contest was able to bring out the transformative potential of Yoga that can be tapped into by any individual with great ease.

The outreach of the contest having been global (with 130 countries being covered), it is expected to have motivated thousands of people to take part in it because of the possibility of wide recognition for the winners of the contest, and further to motivate them to continue their pursuit of yoga.. With just three weeks of promotional activities and campaigns, the Ministry was able to reach out to 164 million people, which is an indication of the inherent appeal of Yoga to the common people. The contest with its wide reach also served as an important platform for mobilising the public interest in International Day of Yoga 2020, despite the constraints of the lockdown situation.

The success in having the contest carried out in 130 countries and in having reached out to 164 million people (all coordinated from AYUSH Bhavan, New Delhi) also gives the Ministry the confidence to take up such global campaigns on other aspects of AYUSH Sector in future.

In order to continue building on these outcomes of MLMY and achieving greater engagement with the public in coming years, it is proposed that similar activities/contests should be a part of every IDY event. The event can ideally be launched in March every year as a part of a 100-day countdown to IDY so that campaigns could be run to take IDY event to a level of universal public participation.

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My Life My Yoga Contest 2020

Prize winners at the global level

1. Category: Professional – Female

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	RajniGehlot	India	Rajnigehlot[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Pooja Patel	India	missworldyogini[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	Diana Carolina Chacon Munoz	Colombia	dianachacon22[at]gmail[dot]com

2. Category: Professional – Male

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	AshwathHegde	India	ashubalekoppa[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	ChaingaDorji	Bhutan	chaingad[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	MarksimKarkiMuthukrishnan	Oman	marximkarki[at]gmail[dot]com

3. Category: Adults – Female

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st Prize	Shailee Prasad	India	shaileeprsd[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	PhuntshoDema	Bhutan	deltshopk[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	Sally Nguyen	Singapore	ultimatecoolness[at]yahoo[dot]com.sg

4. Category: Adults –Male

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	Rajpal Singh Arya	India	aryarajpalsingh[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Hassan Issa	Syria	mhassanissa[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	HarshitParihar	India	harshitparihar[at]gmail[dot]com

5. Category: Youth –Female

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	NavyaaSH	India	harishsn[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize*	AvniRamrakshani	India	avni.leo[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize*	Shams Abdullah Ali Ragab Mohamed Butler	Egypt	Shamsbtlr255[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	HaripriyaSreenivasan	Saudi Arabia	sreenipoyil[at]hotmail[dot]com

* The Jury have recommended four prizes in the “Youth – Female” category, with two candidates bracketed for the 2nd prize.

6. Category: Youth – Male

Prize	Name	Country	Contact
1st prize	Pranay Sharma	India	Prajju[at]gmail[dot]com
2nd prize	Sunny Khelera	India	sunnykhelera[at]gmail[dot]com
3rd prize	MansifHelali	Bangladesh	mansifhelali[at]gmail[dot]com