NEW DELHI LETTER:Bureaucracy and a lack of preparation bode severe embarrassment for India's Commonwealth Games, writes RAHUL BEDI
WITH barely nine weeks left for the Commonwealth Games to begin in New Delhi, little seems to be in place for what has been billed as the “coming out” party for an economically buoyant India.
Large parts of the capital, over which the games will be spread, resemble building sites with massive dugouts and piles of debris that render the city’s normally traffic-choked roads even more impossible to negotiate in the monsoon downpour.
Many of the stadiums, including the main track and field venue, remain unfinished as are the athletes’ village and related sites.
Numerous incomplete infrastructural projects such as landscaping and approach roads have caused even Organisation Committee officials to panic.
According to the constantly changing completion deadlines, the sporting venues were to be handed over to the Organisation Committee by August 1st – at least eight months behind schedule – to enable it to resume “overlay work” or to add final touches for the fortnight-long games beginning on October 3rd.
But senior officials concede this handover would be token at best, and little more than a photo opportunity.
Construction work by the incessantly bickering agencies involved in the games will continue, leaving no time for either trial-runs to resolve inevitable glitches, or to provide practice sessions for local athletes.
Intended as India’s riposte to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, hosted by nuclear and economic rival China, the Commonwealth Games, featuring participants from 71 former colonial states, bodes severe embarrassment for the country.
Critics point out that almost all Olympic venues in China were ready about a year before the games. And while Beijing set out to wow the world with structures such as the iconic Bird’s Nest stadium, the handful of completed, albeit pedestrian, Commonwealth Games sites, are already falling apart under the impact of a few light monsoon showers.
Other venues have sprung innumerable leaks and to make matters worse, weather forecasters have predicted heavy rains for the duration of the games in October.
“Keeping a time schedule is one thing; maintaining quality and safety control especially when construction takes place at a blistering pace, is quite another,” said the widely circulated Hindustan Times earlier this week.
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” the paper said resignedly, indirectly outsourcing the success of the games to karma, the fallback alternative for many Indians when faced with adversity.
But that is not all.
Catering contracts awarded recently – after much wrangling – to provide 52,500 meals broadly covering the varied cuisines of the Commonwealth countries, and to meet athletes’ nutritional requirements, were summarily cancelled this month after bureaucratic rows.
Officials involved in the preparations concede that many construction, catering and related contracts that should have been awarded in early 2009 were signed 12 months later at significantly higher cost, indicating large-scale corruption.
Consequently, even the inflated $3 billion outlay for the games – almost three times the initial costing of $1.4 billion – had escalated.
Only last week the Organisation Committee, pleading penury, demanded an additional $160 million for sundry expenses, such as athletes’ accommodation; printing flags of various countries; waste management; and the massive expense of the opening and closing ceremonies, the cost for which has multiplied threefold to $83.3 million.
India has yet another reason to feel disappointed: in addition to Queen Elizabeth, who has declined to inaugurate the games for the first time in four decades, several top athletes are not
taking part. These include Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest runner from Jamaica, and Scottish cyclist and Olympics champion Chris Hoy.
When bidding for the games in November 2003, India had, as a sweetener, flamboyantly committed itself to paying the return airfare to and from Delhi for thousands of participating athletes and officials from 71 countries. Many sports enthusiasts and officials believe the absence of top stars will make this a “wasted expenditure”.
Security too remains a serious concern in a highly disturbed region awash with Islamist militants and attacks by Maoist insurgents, all of whom look upon the Commonwealth Games as an opportunity to further their causes with strikes that would ensure them the oxygen of publicity.
Locals fear the authorities will impose a near curfew on all movement for the duration of the games and police and paramilitaries are seeking 25,000 stadium passes to ensure security. In many of the stadiums, this would account for more than half their total capacity.
But Organisation Committee head Suresh Kalmadi, who is also an MP from the ruling Congress Party, is confident of being able to hold the “best Commonwealth Games ever”– somewhat a denial of a very visible reality.