Surviving the silly season
How the common man will survive in the Capital during the elongated sporting season is one question that gives you the heebie-jeebies.
Starting this February 28, when the Hockey World Cup kickstarts and then gives way to IPL in mid-March, which in turn carries through April, Delhi will turn into a fortress. And considering the fact that the administration has to provide foolproof security, it’s going to be a veritable traffic nightmare.
We experienced a dress rehearsal of this chaos when the Faridabad and Delhi Police closed the main artery near Tughlaqabad where the shooting championship was going on last week. Badarpur residents got stuck for more than four hours just to navigate one traffic signal to Delhi!
The Hockey World Cup will take place at the mouth of the India Gate which would mean a whole lot of roads that open into Capital’s main circle will be off limits. People will have to take a detour into Connaught Place where outer circle construction for the Commonwealth Games is already making life and movement miserable.
One hears that schools have decided to declare the CWG fortnight a holiday, considering that security will have to be extra-hyper, sportspersons will have to be given dedicated road space and traffic diversions will all but keep you on the periphery of central and south Delhi.
Is there any other way to do this? Delhi has too many people to indulge in mega affairs like CWG. The argument would be that Delhi held Asiad 82 quite successfully, so why not CWG? Well, for one the population — both human and vehicular — has increased manifold since those good old 80s. Office-time jams have now deteriorated into daylong ones — a fallout of 3.65 lakh cars a year being officially added to the Capital’s roads annually.
According to a Centre for Science and Environment report, there has been a 132 per cent increase in the number of cars in Delhi in the past decade whereas the road length has increased by just 20 per cent correspondingly.
In 1989, the population of Delhi was 55.6 lakh approximately, as opposed to 2010 when it is a whopping 1.3 crore, and that’s a figure based on only registered people!
Add to this the security threat on the Capital in this awfully long silly season and you would have enough reason to take a long holiday into the hills. Already the utterings of one Ilyas Kashmiri from across the border has triggered a never-before reaction on security issues, which unfortunately you can’t fault or wish away. Perhaps, that’s the reason why all officials related to the upcoming hockey event have gone into hiding, trying to avoid the media at all times.
No one is being allowed to meet the players, go into the stadium for spot stories or even approach any of the practice sessions of the Indian squad — all this in the name of security. They tell you privately how they have RA&W and IB advisories to completely cordon off the players from the media. Such is the hyper-sensitivity to security that hockey players have emerged more unapproachable than our cricket stars.
All cricket tournaments allow media into net sessions but the Sports Authority of India thinks otherwise for the hockey tourney. Think of it, the Hockey World Cup could have been turned into a big media event to push the popularity of our national game. But thanks to the Ministry’s clam-up, no one really knows or is bothered about the event.
As it is, India’s hockey performance is dismal. Out of the 12 teams playing the tournament, India is at the bottom of the table at the 12th position. It is in the event only because it is the host nation. If anything, the national game needed exposure and headlines but that is not to be.
Starting this February 28, when the Hockey World Cup kickstarts and then gives way to IPL in mid-March, which in turn carries through April, Delhi will turn into a fortress. And considering the fact that the administration has to provide foolproof security, it’s going to be a veritable traffic nightmare.
We experienced a dress rehearsal of this chaos when the Faridabad and Delhi Police closed the main artery near Tughlaqabad where the shooting championship was going on last week. Badarpur residents got stuck for more than four hours just to navigate one traffic signal to Delhi!
The Hockey World Cup will take place at the mouth of the India Gate which would mean a whole lot of roads that open into Capital’s main circle will be off limits. People will have to take a detour into Connaught Place where outer circle construction for the Commonwealth Games is already making life and movement miserable.
One hears that schools have decided to declare the CWG fortnight a holiday, considering that security will have to be extra-hyper, sportspersons will have to be given dedicated road space and traffic diversions will all but keep you on the periphery of central and south Delhi.
Is there any other way to do this? Delhi has too many people to indulge in mega affairs like CWG. The argument would be that Delhi held Asiad 82 quite successfully, so why not CWG? Well, for one the population — both human and vehicular — has increased manifold since those good old 80s. Office-time jams have now deteriorated into daylong ones — a fallout of 3.65 lakh cars a year being officially added to the Capital’s roads annually.
According to a Centre for Science and Environment report, there has been a 132 per cent increase in the number of cars in Delhi in the past decade whereas the road length has increased by just 20 per cent correspondingly.
In 1989, the population of Delhi was 55.6 lakh approximately, as opposed to 2010 when it is a whopping 1.3 crore, and that’s a figure based on only registered people!
Add to this the security threat on the Capital in this awfully long silly season and you would have enough reason to take a long holiday into the hills. Already the utterings of one Ilyas Kashmiri from across the border has triggered a never-before reaction on security issues, which unfortunately you can’t fault or wish away. Perhaps, that’s the reason why all officials related to the upcoming hockey event have gone into hiding, trying to avoid the media at all times.
No one is being allowed to meet the players, go into the stadium for spot stories or even approach any of the practice sessions of the Indian squad — all this in the name of security. They tell you privately how they have RA&W and IB advisories to completely cordon off the players from the media. Such is the hyper-sensitivity to security that hockey players have emerged more unapproachable than our cricket stars.
All cricket tournaments allow media into net sessions but the Sports Authority of India thinks otherwise for the hockey tourney. Think of it, the Hockey World Cup could have been turned into a big media event to push the popularity of our national game. But thanks to the Ministry’s clam-up, no one really knows or is bothered about the event.
As it is, India’s hockey performance is dismal. Out of the 12 teams playing the tournament, India is at the bottom of the table at the 12th position. It is in the event only because it is the host nation. If anything, the national game needed exposure and headlines but that is not to be.
Published February 21, 2010 in Sunday Pioneer; http://www.dailypioneer.com/237423/Surviving-the-silly-season.html
Comments
Post a Comment