I love sport and particularly athletics. It has been saddening for me watching the events taking place in Delhi over the past couple of days but, for me personally, completely expected.
Let me explain.
In August 2008 I set off on a gap four months which began in India and specifically, Delhi. My travels in India were to last a month and would take me from Delhi south and across country to end in Chennai. It was an interesting and difficult month, one which frustrated and left me flabbergasted at much that I saw. Below I've looked at two issues that to do with The Commonwealth Games in Delhi but there is still a lot more to come out at some point.
Sport:
August 2008 was the month of the Beijing Olympics and in India I was able to see…none of it! I tried, I mean I really tried, I really, really wanted to watch the 100metres (I was a sprinter at school) but I just couldn’t find any coverage. Admittedly I wasn’t in the heart of the biggest cities but I was hardly in the middle of a shanty town either; more on that later.
There were great celebrations for the Indian athletes that won medals, especially the gold medal winner, but he is the exception not a rule. His father built him a shooting range in the family grounds to help him practice, hardly a legacy for future Indians.
A legacy of sport in India needs to be massive grass roots exposure. Education does come first but sport (alongside art) can be, and should be, a big part of that. I had a similar conversation on a train between Mysore and Chennai with an Indian man. He argued that education should be a primary focus and that children should not be distracted by sport. I said that some of the smartest people I know were also incredibly good athletes and that in U.S.A they use sport as a way of educating those less fortunate through the college sports scholarship program.
If the youth of a country are being disencouraged from sport what is the point of an international multi-event games being held in the country?
Construction and Organisation, or lack there of:
Bureaucracy in India has reached new highs of ridiculousness. Forms have to be filled in to complete almost every action and heaven forbid if that form is completed incorrectly, that’s a new form, and if you don’t have the right official document to accompany the correct form that will be a new appointment with a new form and so it continues. Accompany this with “the world’s largest democracy” and a country that has over 300 major democratic parties (The U.S.A has 2 major parties, the U.K 3) and it is easy to understand that things can ground to a halt pretty quickly.
There is another major problem that may prohibit progress in construction works: backshish. No Nik, not what Puff, that amazing magic dragon likes but, what makes India work. You can call it tipping if you want, you can call bribery if you want but, what it is does do is make things work a whole lot easier and, more importantly, a whole lot quicker.
With a lack of backshish but a lot form filling out going on India has created its own time zone: IndiaTime. Here, anything is possible; a train can leave 2 hours late and arrive 30minutes early, time can just drag on. And on. And on. And…
It is my, very humble, opinion, that there needed to be one figure who could hold everything in the construction of the Commonwealth Games together. That however, was never going to happen.
What now appears to be complete disorganisation of The Games I fear is systematic of the whole country. In late 2008 Britain gave over 500million pounds in charitable donations to fight poverty and inequality, The Games are estimated to cost 2billion pounds. India has a higher rate of poverty than sub-Saharan Africa, 400million people live under the UN’s decreed poverty level and yet it has a space program. I can’t believe alone in spotting these blatant, horrible contrasts.
By winning the privilege to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games India should not have tried to compete with Beijing to create a showcase event, to create a magnificent world image. Imagine what a world image would be created if a country managed to significantly reduce its poverty rate, or, made huge efforts to prevent insect borne diseases instead of making holes in the middle of its capital city so that they can be filled with water perfect for mosquito breeding and then create one of the worst dengue fever epidemics seen in the city. All in the name of world image through sport.
Do I believe that India should have got the games? No
Do I believe that India should spend its peoples taxes on fighting poverty and not trying to create a great global image? Yes
Tell me what you think
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