WHEN THE Chakra inspired logo of the XIX Commonwealth Games 2010, Delhi, was unveiled a 1000 days before, on January 6, 2008, no one had any idea that the spiral depicting the growth of India into a proud and vibrant nation might turn to be a spiral of our ineptitude.
The Commonwealth will be more than just another sports event. It promises to leverage India’s stock in the world. It promises to re-establish the country as one that can host an event of global standards. Pragmatically, it will reaffirm that India can be a potential challenger to China.
On the domestic front, it can redefine the way we have been planning for our cities. It will engender a belief that we can fast track our development to deadlines, a belief that we too are a sporting nation. So many benefits!
However, the games have a negative side too. As India prepares to wing gold in every medal possibly available, it ignores the large scale eviction and environmental loss necessitated by the construction. Funds are also being diverted from more important needs to get the work done fast.
However, as the deadline comes nearer and nearer, the question that arises is whether we would be able to carry it off. The story is definitely not going to be over in a yes or no. As of now, the only thing we can be sure of is that India is going to hold the games. The current geopolitical situation will ensure that the country would host the games. There is no one who can take away the games from India until we do not throw it away ourselves, which, we will not because our ‘self-respect’ won’t allow that.
When China hosted the Olympics in 2008, it set the bar higher than ever before, as for the way games were held. All infrastructure requirements were completed well before the deadlines. Beijing created history in terms of expenditure it incurred over the games, a dizzying $40 billion. It also created history by winning 51 gold medals, the only country to cross the tally of 50, after USSR who had won 55 gold medals in Seoul Olympics way back in 1988. The 51 medals are remarkable also because 45 more countries and 2109 more players participated in 2008 than in 1988.
We, on the other hand, have been winning lesser and lesser medals. While we scored 69 medals, 30 of them gold, in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth games, in 2006, we ended up with 50, 22 of them gold, in the Melbourne Commonwealth games.
A Commonwealth Games factsheet announced that Delhi will invest Rs 26,000 crore on infrastructure and another Rs 7,000 crore on stadiums and roads. In any case, Delhi will be regenerated from what it was five years ago. The tourism ministry claimed that it has already finished 30,000 rooms and will finish another 40,000 before the games begin. It’s another matter that 13 of the 19 venues aren’t going to completed on schedule and more than four lakh people have been evicted, almost forcefully, since 2004. This manner of welfare development model, would again be development for some and not for others. If we had to develop like this only, we should have better done all this five years ago.
Politics and nationalism have always surrounded international sports events, whether it be China’s resolve to showcase a progressive China last year or Barack Obama’s attempt to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago this year. Politics, however, cannot substitute poor management. It’s anybody’s guess that Delhi is far from ready. The infrastructure woes are more than just non completion of sports complexes. The roads, flyovers, congestion, jams, cleanliness, public transport, hygiene standards of food and water available, it’s all in a state of mess.
There are many in our sports establishments who claim: Yes, we can. As far as claims are concerned, we have been the most fantastic claimers on this planet! No one can say Indian’s do not have commitment but when that comes to behaving as a nation, we are at a disadvantage, as we remain mired in politics more than economics; in speech more than action; in the game of playing ‘games’, than sports.
