Far from the pretension that the Commonwealth Games will be “world-class”, the host city of Delhi is today in an unenviable position. Less than two months to go, the games are becoming more of a national embarrassment than pride. The scams associated with the games seem never-ending, the sporting infrastructure is falling apart even before use and mosquitoes have made the Games Village their home even before the athletes have arrived. Is it not fair then to ask whether India is at all deserving of, and capable of, hosting such large-scale events?
Indian football captain Baichung Bhutia, who was at hand to welcome the Queen’s Baton in Calcutta, thinks it was a “wrong decision” to host the games. “We aren’t ready for this. Instead, the money should have been spent on developing sports infrastructure, which is really poor in India. After all, haven’t the National Games been postponed at least thrice for lack of funds and infrastructure?” he asks. “Now that the games are upon us, we have to support it but looking back, I think it was not right to bring the games here,” he says.
| “What is being reported in the media is definitely not good news. It is disturbing.” —Saina Nehwal, Badminton Player |
| “It was a wrong decision to host the games. We are not prepared for this.” —Bhaichung Bhutia, Football Player | ||
| “Imagine the Indian PM bowling the first ball in a Test! Sports isn’t yet central to India.” —Mihir Bose, Sports Journalist |
| “We can do it. All it takes is some efficiency, which the CWG seems to lack.” —Vikram Verma, Ex sports minister |
Even our sporting credentials leave much to be desired. Mihir Bose, a former BBC sports editor and a London-based writer and broadcaster, thinks sports is yet to be “more central to India”. “Sports in India has indeed moved from the back pages to the front, but it is still very celebrity-based,” he says. This is unlike Brazil, where its president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wept when his country won the right to host the 2016 Olympics, or in the US, where Obama throws the first pitch in a baseball game. “Can you think of Manmohan Singh bowling the first ball in a Test match?” asks Bose. “This trend was set by Mahatma Gandhi, who in his autobiography confessed he hated sports and, in the 1930s, refused to help when Indian hockey needed money to go to an Olympics. Indian politicians may not follow many of the Mahatma’s ideas but on sports they seem to agree with him.”
And in a country where there are more poor in eight of our states than in all of sub-Saharan Africa, should the government spend over Rs 30,000 crore on the games? More so when the poor have to be dislocated forcefully from the city and their rights brushed away? This is a question that many urban Indians—more arriviste than concerned—will dismiss right away. Whichever side of the debate one may be on, there can be little doubt that India had to put in its best when it was awarded the games. In fact, the opposite happened.
Vikram Verma, who was Union sports minister in the NDA government, says, “We certainly have the capacity to host games like these. Look at the successful 2003 Afro-Asian Games. It was pretty much at the same scale as the Commonwealth. All it needs is efficient management, something that the Commonwealth Games is lacking.” Struggling to cope with the mess it has created, the government has already ruled out a bid for the 2019 Asian Games.
Pushing sports out of the spotlight, the fiasco has left sportspersons disturbed. “Whatever is being reported is not good news. We all feel sad, as this should not be happening just two months before the games. It is disturbing,” says India’s top badminton star Saina Nehwal and an ambassador for the games. “But as sportspersons there’s little one can do other than motivate ourselves to do well and hope that all will go well at the games.”
