CWG: Exit hero, enter Nero!
Besides our national honour, the latest casualty of the Commonwealth Games is Octopus Paul who died laughing when asked if the CWG would be a success! You may also laugh out aloud at this ingenuous and funny but very apt tweet that landed in my mailbox on the day top CWG officials were tarnishing India’s image internationally by holding forth on desi hygiene standards in context of the Games Village, and also trying to explain the unseemly collapse of a pedestrian bridge next to the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.
As an Indian, however, I feel extremely saddened by the way the Games have been continuously falling into an unending abyss of mismanagement and mounting shame, fuelled as that is by cruel ineptness and sustained Governmental apathy. That’s Indian too, the officials might just tell you. They would quote the great jugaad syndrome to announce to the bemused world that things always work out in the end and India will not be India if these eleventh hour glitches do not occur.
But really, is there nothing we can do to arrest the unfortunate state of affairs? We have been continuously advised/exhorted/pushed to be patriotic and support the Games. Who would not want to do so? The Indian public is genetically modulated to be patriotic. Did we not cry collectively when coffins came from Kargil? Did we not espouse the cause of whistleblowers like Dubey? Have we not stood steadfastly for J&K despite it being a huge life and financial drain? Have we not made blockbusters out of patriotic Bollywood movies down the ages? Have we not celebrated Indian medals in global sports? Has the territorial integrity of our nation not been a public obsession?
For a population that is still young on Independence (just 63 years ago we were British subjects), patriotism comes naturally and mostly gets attached to all of Indian Governments’ endeavours to showcase it abroad. Then why, one may ask, is the entire Indian population against the Commonwealth Games? Why we are so scornful? Why we are laughing along with the world at ourselves? It does not stand to reason unless those wanting it to be a patriotic uprising in support of Delhi 2010 understand why there is so much disdain and anger on the streets about something that was designed to showcase a nation its population is generally proud of.
The reason lies in all things very evident. First, you cannot ride roughshod over an entire citizenry to build the so-called world-class infrastructure. For more than two years now, life has been miserable for Delhi’ites. As the Capital lay threaded, people were told to live dangerously, uncomfortably and almost like animals because a “patriotic” venture was on its way. No one in the official circles bothered to see or even ponder over the inconveniences pushed down the throat of the common man amid all the unending construction activity.
Yet, the anger against such wanton and people-unfriendly infrastructural build-up was borne mostly silently by the Delhi’ites with just some murmurs of protest and a reconciled attitude. What took their goat was how, while the public was made to suffer incessantly, some men at the helm of CWG affairs made money, huge money and quite wantonly at that.
Now, the Games were not merely an inconvenience, they were also corrupt and eating into hard-earned and well-taxed public money. The anger built up, slowly and steadily yet the patriotic instinct kept the population comparatively quiet. Pragmatists have often argued that corruption in big projects or ventures cannot be totally weeded out and some amount of it has to be allowed to keep the wheels of work moving. May sound unpalatable to idealists but they would still have turned a blind eye to it, had the gory details of how unprecedented and huge the corruption in CWG was not hit media headlines.
As the Government played Nero, the anger built up as did the mismanagement in CWG. Toilet rolls at Rs 4,500 a bundle and yet “filthy toilets” in the Games Village, not to mention dogs inhabiting athlete beds while LCD TVs and push-button amenities were lying around! Obviously, the priorities were all wrong and the men managing them even worse. Today, a speck on the globe like New Zealand can come and berate our inefficiency and we look like the world’s most helpless billion people population! How can we be patriotic about this? Even the blindest of blind India lover cannot defend this. To put it straight, the Games are not just inept anymore, they are corrupt and absolutely unrequired if, that is, priorities were to get straightened up.
One can’t fathom why the officials attached to CWG are coming out as bumbling fools. First, they allow foreign inspectors into the Games Village when “finishing touches” are yet to be given. Then, knowing fully well that they are on scrutiny, they can’t even hire a squad to chase away the strays from world-class bedrooms! To top all this up, they hold a Press conference to say Indian standards of hygiene are like this only! Why couldn’t they have just apologized for the shortcomings and promised a speedy clean-up of the act? Wouldn’t that have gone a long way in stitching up our battered national honour? And lastly, where is the Government? It is obviously not in Kashmir; it is not on to the price index; it is not busy sorting out the food crisis either. Then where is it? Why is it not taking up the Games issue seriously? Well, the only explanation to such cussedness can be one fact — that it is not patriotic enough.
As an Indian, this no longer shocks me. It completely dismembers me. And I am sure that’s the case with every patriotic Indian who feels the CWG were not allowed to slap us on our faces so globally. At least then, our national honour would not have become a worldwide mocking point!
Source: Sunday Pioneer, September 26, 2010
As an Indian, however, I feel extremely saddened by the way the Games have been continuously falling into an unending abyss of mismanagement and mounting shame, fuelled as that is by cruel ineptness and sustained Governmental apathy. That’s Indian too, the officials might just tell you. They would quote the great jugaad syndrome to announce to the bemused world that things always work out in the end and India will not be India if these eleventh hour glitches do not occur.
But really, is there nothing we can do to arrest the unfortunate state of affairs? We have been continuously advised/exhorted/pushed to be patriotic and support the Games. Who would not want to do so? The Indian public is genetically modulated to be patriotic. Did we not cry collectively when coffins came from Kargil? Did we not espouse the cause of whistleblowers like Dubey? Have we not stood steadfastly for J&K despite it being a huge life and financial drain? Have we not made blockbusters out of patriotic Bollywood movies down the ages? Have we not celebrated Indian medals in global sports? Has the territorial integrity of our nation not been a public obsession?
For a population that is still young on Independence (just 63 years ago we were British subjects), patriotism comes naturally and mostly gets attached to all of Indian Governments’ endeavours to showcase it abroad. Then why, one may ask, is the entire Indian population against the Commonwealth Games? Why we are so scornful? Why we are laughing along with the world at ourselves? It does not stand to reason unless those wanting it to be a patriotic uprising in support of Delhi 2010 understand why there is so much disdain and anger on the streets about something that was designed to showcase a nation its population is generally proud of.
The reason lies in all things very evident. First, you cannot ride roughshod over an entire citizenry to build the so-called world-class infrastructure. For more than two years now, life has been miserable for Delhi’ites. As the Capital lay threaded, people were told to live dangerously, uncomfortably and almost like animals because a “patriotic” venture was on its way. No one in the official circles bothered to see or even ponder over the inconveniences pushed down the throat of the common man amid all the unending construction activity.
Yet, the anger against such wanton and people-unfriendly infrastructural build-up was borne mostly silently by the Delhi’ites with just some murmurs of protest and a reconciled attitude. What took their goat was how, while the public was made to suffer incessantly, some men at the helm of CWG affairs made money, huge money and quite wantonly at that.
Now, the Games were not merely an inconvenience, they were also corrupt and eating into hard-earned and well-taxed public money. The anger built up, slowly and steadily yet the patriotic instinct kept the population comparatively quiet. Pragmatists have often argued that corruption in big projects or ventures cannot be totally weeded out and some amount of it has to be allowed to keep the wheels of work moving. May sound unpalatable to idealists but they would still have turned a blind eye to it, had the gory details of how unprecedented and huge the corruption in CWG was not hit media headlines.
As the Government played Nero, the anger built up as did the mismanagement in CWG. Toilet rolls at Rs 4,500 a bundle and yet “filthy toilets” in the Games Village, not to mention dogs inhabiting athlete beds while LCD TVs and push-button amenities were lying around! Obviously, the priorities were all wrong and the men managing them even worse. Today, a speck on the globe like New Zealand can come and berate our inefficiency and we look like the world’s most helpless billion people population! How can we be patriotic about this? Even the blindest of blind India lover cannot defend this. To put it straight, the Games are not just inept anymore, they are corrupt and absolutely unrequired if, that is, priorities were to get straightened up.
One can’t fathom why the officials attached to CWG are coming out as bumbling fools. First, they allow foreign inspectors into the Games Village when “finishing touches” are yet to be given. Then, knowing fully well that they are on scrutiny, they can’t even hire a squad to chase away the strays from world-class bedrooms! To top all this up, they hold a Press conference to say Indian standards of hygiene are like this only! Why couldn’t they have just apologized for the shortcomings and promised a speedy clean-up of the act? Wouldn’t that have gone a long way in stitching up our battered national honour? And lastly, where is the Government? It is obviously not in Kashmir; it is not on to the price index; it is not busy sorting out the food crisis either. Then where is it? Why is it not taking up the Games issue seriously? Well, the only explanation to such cussedness can be one fact — that it is not patriotic enough.
As an Indian, this no longer shocks me. It completely dismembers me. And I am sure that’s the case with every patriotic Indian who feels the CWG were not allowed to slap us on our faces so globally. At least then, our national honour would not have become a worldwide mocking point!
Source: Sunday Pioneer, September 26, 2010
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