Indians Ignoring Commonwealth Games
I am a little worried about the growing anger aimed at the Commonwealth Games to be held in New Delhi (India). Former Union Sports Minister and a senior member of the ruling Congress Party Manishankar Iyer said “Personally, I will be unhappy if the Commonwealth Games are successful … If the Games do succeed, that mean there’ll be more such games to host in the future, which translates to more money being spent on something unnecessary…I am very happy with the rains…it will ensure that the Commonwealth Games are spoilt”. These are strong statements.
It is estimated that the government of India will spend about $1.6 billion to host these games. In addition the government will spend an additional $3 billion (approximate) to upgrade infrastructure in New Delhi. This includes a brand new world class terminal in the Indira Gandhi International Airport, a new runway at the same airport, dramatic changes to Delhi Metro railway system, new expressway from the city to the airport and new power plants.
Most of the focus by the media has been on the alleged corruption by politicians and bureaucrats who are tasked with organizing these games. I cannot understand why. Corruption is nothing new to India. Indian religion, politics and sports have all been tainted by accusations of corruption in the recent past. But this has not prevented Indians including our politicians from practicing their religion, participating in politics or cheering for their favorite Indian Premier League (IPL) team. So why this animosity now?
The answer is very simple. Indian media and politicians know very well who their new boss is. They are not the nearly 400 million of us who cannot read or write, the almost 500 million who live on less than $1/day or the almost 300 million of us who are categorized as Schedule Caste/Schedule Tribes. India’s new boss is the “nuevo riche” and highly vocal middle class. This middle class (I am one of them) wants the government to stand its ground in Kashmir, get tough with Pakistan, crush the Maoists rebels and not spend any effort on “wasteful” adventures like hosting the Commonwealth Games.
Although the 2010 Commonwealth Games would be the biggest sporting event in our nation’s history, almost all the coverage has been very negative. Only some of us (like Manishankar Iyer) have come out openly and stated what we feel. But there is absolutely no enthusiasm about these games which shows our true feelings. We do not know a lot about the nations, athletes or the favorites for the events (this is in stark contrast to the coverage of a largely insignificant tri-nation Cricket tournament involving India, Sri Lanka and New Zealand. India lost as expected).
One of the real stories of the Commonwealth Games is that almost 425,000 people are employed by the government on a daily wage basis (skilled and unskilled). The government pays about Rs. 75 to Rs. 100 per hour (about $2) for an unskilled laborer and about Rs. 150 (about $3) per hour for a skilled laborer for eight hours of work per day. The number of people employed by the government for the Commonwealth Games is more than those employed by India’s IT industry!!
About 70 laborers have so far been killed in various accidents. It would not be very dramatic to state that most of the laborers who are employed would be on the streets starving if the games were not held in New Delhi. The government is making a real difference in this case.
Manishankar Iyer also stated “The money being spent on the games could have been utilized for developing infrastructure in rural areas and for training sports persons in various disciplines to make India a strong sporting nation. By doing this, at least in 10-15 years India can become another China and win a good number of medals in international sporting events”. This is political double talk.
Most of the Indians who are working in these sites are not middle class Indians from the cities. They are the poor rural migrant workers. How can you train sports persons and win international medals if we do not have the facility to do it? The Commonwealth Games unlike what Manishankar Iyer claims is one of the best investments in infrastructure that the New Delhi metropolitan area has had since the Asian Games in 1983. It has immediate benefits in terms of employment and has long term benefits for all Indians (new air terminal, metro rail, power plant and expressways).
I absolutely am rooting for the success of these games. I hope you do so too. We should not let the life of those 70 dead workers and the hard labor put in by over 425,000 people to go to waste. If we are worried about corruption in sports then we can send a message and boycott the next edition of the Indian Premier League … Where is Manishankar Iyer when we need him the most … oh I know … I read that he was busy attending the wedding of Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar (two people who were involved in the Indian Premier League corruption scandal)!!
“Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up” – Jesse Jackson
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- No Beef during Commonwealth Games in Delhi
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Category: News & Government
Didn’t Manishankar Iyer also say something like ‘I will be hell out of the country during the games’? That’s unpatriotic… and when he gets out, let him stay out!
Yes I remember reading about that. His position on the games is completely opportunistic. The CWG bid was won by New Delhi in 2002. You did not hear a word from this guy in 8 years. Now he wants to capitalize on some of the problems faced by the game organizers.
Nice article….and I truly agree this!
Welcome Sakshi and thank you.
i’m totally rooting for a complete failure of the CWG , and also a total ban for India hosting future international games.
Not a fan of Aiyer, but wht he said is true. the same money can be used for better infra, roads. And the same ppl used for building the horribly low standard CWG complexes, can be employed in infra and road construction. And yeah, there will be corruption here too, but atleas the public will get better infra and roads.
And, dare not question my patriotism.. :)
And we need a CWG to build stadium for sportpersons to practice. Thts nothing but an excuse. U dont host a CWG and then produce medal winners. You build the facilities first, let the athlets traing and then host the games. how many games did china host prior to olympics, but how many medals have they won?
You are absolutely entitled to your opinion.
I think that holding the games and building the supporting infrastructure (roads, airport terminals, railway links) are the way to go. I do not think that a project like the CWG is about winning medals but also about employing people (in the long term who cares about medals?). India has won the world cup only once in cricket. The chances of them winning another one anytime soon is remote. But we still continue to participate and also host the next cup.
I personally can never root for an event like this to fail.
wht to do! i cant tolerate.. thts why i dont want anymore games in india.. :)
Anyway, apart from all this comments business, i must tell you, this is the only blog space where i put in my comments. keep writing ! :)
Appreciate it!
You are welcome.
well i am not hoping that CWG should be a complete failure, but whatever it would be the government will say it was a success and the opposition will claim it to be failed…thats how things go on in India.
And yes Hari CWG hosting gave employment, but leaving the low wage labours ,the higher officials have been employed not on skill basis but on relationship with the top officials.
And if those 77000 crores were spend on building roads and other infrastructures in rural areas , it too would have given employment to people, so we can not just say that “CWG hosting has given employments and so we should keep quiet and pray for its success” coz even if it was not held still employment can be provided by those 77000 crores.
I dont agree with you when you say you are going to watch IPL and cheer on it and whatever…coz i think we need to take a stand , we can not just pass the buck that we cheer in IPL it too is corrupted then why not CWG and when IPL4 will come we will say when we cheered in CWG which was such a mess then why not in it….the point is we have to make a begining somewhere, we can not just pass it to the future.
About Manishankar aiyer m not a supporter of him but i remember in 2006 he was the union sports minister and he raised some fingers on the way CWG preparations were being carried on and he was kicked out of the ministry, thats the reason he is coming out so strongly…..
Do u know that CWG was actually first planned to be at the outer areas of delhi and haryana, i dont remember the name of the place but initially it was planned to be held there , because it was a under developed area and the reason was that due to CWG it would be developed but ministers and OC changed the venue after winning the bid as per their comforts and bring it to a location which is developed(in respect to those areas) and is over populated….
well there are many facts but i dont want you all to bore you out with them, the thing is we shouldn’t let some people wave our national flag in the name of national pride and hide their acts of corruption behind the waving flag..
its just my opinion and belief ,and in democracy everyone has the right to have one… :)
Manoj,
I am making the point that what is going on the CWG is not uncommon in India. Everywhere in India jobs are given based on some criteria other than merit. CWG is no exception. We can also debate on where to spend the money. Spending money in improving the infrastructure of a major city like New Delhi is a good thing. Other might argue that it should be done in much more rural areas. But these are debatable. I did not say I will watch the IPL and cheer it on. What I was wonder is that if the IPL can have a following with all its corruption scandals why not the CWG?
Hari,
Yes Corruption is not uncommon in India but this event exposed it out to the whole world tarnishing Indias image.Now either we can shut our eyes and let it go and cheer for evrything as we always do or this time we can make a new begining, its better late then never…..
Generations ahead, what will we say to the next generation that yes it was most devastating example of corruption ever but still we go and enjoyed it cheered this lootfest because some ministers said it is our national pride on stake….
This has to end somewhere and we have to take a start……
I really do think that infrastructure and other developments should not only be focused in the major city delhi, and the thing is with 77000 crores not only delhi but other hundreds of village could be developed, i strongly believe that in indian economy the richer are gettin rich and poor are getting poorer, but wont comment more on that as u rightly said it is a debatable issue……
you know this question of if ipl then why not cwg was raised up with a senior official then his answer was ” i believe that ipl too is corrupted but even after corruption their management and organisation was wonderful, atleast they didnt bring such shame in front of whole world like CWG….and also Lalit modi has been sacked out of his position but in CWG we see no such thing…”
I didn’t completely agree with the official(but he did have some points) coz corruption is corruption no matter in what form and so IPL should also be deeply scanned before its next following….and we should make sure of it…..!!!!!!
Manoj,
I do not disagree with you. We have to demand better standards from our politicians and hold them accountable whether the event goes smoothly or not (in that aspect I disagree with the IPL official). But we should not loose perspective. The problems that the CWG is facing is largely due to bad planning, scheduling, execution and poor engineering. If we just keep focusing on corruption we lose track of other serious issues that are lurking in the background. The question that we should ask is that if corruption was not an issue will the CWG be held in first class fashion? Remember we are having problems controlling the rain water, building small bridges, cleaning the construction site or the Games village.
Looking back I think that the Indian government should have outsourced the project planning and execution to companies like TATA, L&T or others who have a lot of experience in large scale construction and maintenance. The new terminal in Delhi, the highways and the power plants that were part of the CWG project were completed on time by private companies irrespective of the corruption inherent in these projects.
hari,
the best way was to make a balance of both public and private sector…….
There is a reason why the problems of bad planning , scheduling etc holds today, it is not because Indians cant do it..
In India there is a strange way of distribution of work such as ministries, the ministers who won their election are to be awarded by their parties so what they do is award them with ministries, but heres the problem those ministers have no idea or experience in that field of ministry, for eg the agriculture minister knows nothing about agriculture and so is the case with other ministries…..
The same happened in CWG the top head of OC knows nothing about management, construction not even sports……This has to Change…..
but i still didn’t expect such a level of corruption and still no action……
If once the games are over i am assured this whole case would be thrown away to north pole….
By taking an action (before the game starts) against the culprits we can send a message to whole world, and also people of India deserves this….
I would still not cheer this time in this loot-fest but the ones who will will still feel a sense of justice….
India doesn’t win Olympic medals — not because we don’t have the talent but because people who run sports would rather stuff their pockets with stolen gold than help their country win a gold medal.
Manoj,
The politics of corruption and nepotism that you mention is everywhere in the world. This is one of the disadvantages of a democracy (American government budget deficit is $1.5 trillion dollars for 2010. But this year’s budget had an estimated $45 billion in what is called “Pork Barrel” spending that does not benefit anyone except the politician and his supporters).
We cannot continue to believe that we are where we are as a nation strictly because of corruption and bad politics. Corruption and politics are convenient excuses for not getting things done. Many African and Asian countries that are in worst situations than us are winning Olympic medals. We have to start digging deeper and find the real reasons. Maybe we lost the competitive spirit, maybe our athletes are not aware of the latest training or nutritional techniques, maybe the people who are the fit are choosing IT over sports when they are young, maybe there is not enough sponsorship money and people chose cricket over other sports, etc.