The Punjab rural sports circuit runs on the mela calendar: kabaddi, wrestling, tug of war, weightlifting with stones, bullock cart racing until it was banned, tractor and horse events, and a set of strength displays that involve tractors and human bodies in combinations that alarm outsiders.
Kila Raipur near Ludhiana, running since 1933, is the largest and is called the rural Olympics. It draws lakhs over three days.
Bullock cart racing was banned by the Supreme Court on animal cruelty grounds and has been the subject of continuing litigation and state legislation, as with jallikattu in Tamil Nadu.
The circuit is where village reputations are made and where the kabaddi economy described elsewhere on this site operates.
It is also, along with the mela system it sits inside, one of the last functioning institutions that brings a whole tehsil together in one place for a reason unconnected to religion or politics.
Nobody has documented the full circuit. There is no calendar of Punjab's rural sports events published anywhere.
It was started as a village sports day by Inder Singh Grewal and grew into three days that pull teams, animals and crowds from across the state. The family association still runs it, which makes it one of very few Punjabi institutions of any kind that has stayed in one family's hands for ninety years without turning into something else.
Every district has smaller versions attached to melas and to gurdwara anniversaries, and the circuit runs through the winter.
Nothing about the circuit is professional and almost everything about it involves money. Prizes are put up by village committees and by emigrants, betting runs alongside the events, and the kabaddi players who do well are signed by clubs abroad. It is an informal economy with no accounts kept anywhere in it.