Dreams gone sour

The CWG shows the exact opposite image of what India intended.

After clinching the 1976 Olympics, the mayor of Montreal at the time, Jean Drapeau, said the Games would be the first auto-financed Olympics. “The Montreal Olympics can no more have a deficit, than a man can have a baby,” he said. No man has yet, despite Arnold Schwarzenegger’s shenanigans in Junior. Still, 30 years later, in November 2006, Montreal paid the last installment on its debt incurred on organising the Olympics.

That is the problem with big events. A few people, ostensibly the wise guys, take decisions which weigh on a great many people, financially and otherwise. Going by the reactions — on the street, in offices, on the Internet and in drawing rooms — to the issues arising out of the Commonwealth Games, never have so few wise guys taken decisions that will weigh on so many people — for a long time to come. The burden to be carried by Indians, though difficult to quantify in monetary terms, will far outweigh the debt borne by the folks in Montreal and take much longer to get rid of, if at all.

The Beijing Olympics was China’s coming-out party. It announced the country as a superpower. The $6 billion Commonwealth Games — the figure could rise to $10 billion depending on who you asked and if you included the broader aesthetic and infrastructure facelift for the city — were meant to similarly display India’s growing global economic and political power.

For ages, India was known as the land of elephants, snake charmers, naked sadhus, Taj Mahal, and chaotic roads littered with cattle and three-wheelers. (All of these were shown on screen within 10 minutes of James Bond arriving in India in Octopussy). In recent years, that image was diluted as Indian professionals in the fields of management and information technology made their presence felt — some even rising to head big global organisations.

Had we got it right, we could have announced to the world our prowess in building infrastructure and managing a show. The world had been watching with interest, because India is slated to spend $1.5 trillion on public works projects over the next decade. The projects are essential to maintaining our surging economic growth and the similarly surging population.

Instead, what have we got here? We have earned a quick reputation as a country of filth, bad hygiene, corruption, government inadequacy and one which is largely unsafe and uninhabitable — hardly the stuff of superpower dreams.

Worse, the world can be forgiven for thinking of our government and other administrative people as apathetic. The location of the 109-yard footbridge collapse could not have been more inappropriate — right next to the stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held. But those responsible for the event seek to dismiss it as a trivial incident.

Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit made the perfunctory round of the trauma centre at AIIMS and announced compensation for the injured. That is where she should have stopped. But she had to open her mouth to say that the collapse of the bridge was a lesser calamity because it was not meant to be used by athletes and games officials, only the spectators. Incidentally, she is part of a party which claims to be the savior of the aam aadmi.

(suveen.sinha@bsmail.in)