Why hosting a big, troubled sporting event is like putting on a wedding

Well, now we all will know the real competence of Indian democracy hogwash. People, and especially media from this part of the world look at Bombay, Bangalore and come up with fascinating folklores about the rise of the Indian economy. 250 million Indian defecate on train tracks and riverbeds. 450 million are poor, more than in all Africa combined. Delusional country this is, for fancying being a power of any sort...

Is anyone really surprised? Anyone who has called a customer service person in India knows of the Indian work ethic....

Also, I should note here that these games are truly a disgrace for the common Wealth games. The games are supposed to represent the best in humanity. But in fact, India is using child labor to build much of the stadiums. Young children are working in dangerous jobs, just so that the rich can show off about their country.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/05/bricks_for_bread_and_mi...

But as they say, you can only hide so much. India has done its best to hide it malnutrition problem, racism, and poverty from the rest of the world, and has tried its best to make india look like a superpower with moronic phrases like 'india shining' (which most of the rich indians believe!)

Personally, I'm a bit curious to see how much of a failure it will be.

I'm also curious as to why so few indians are commenting here. Must be too embarrassed, hehe.

Well, It's India!
he he he he.........
What else is to be expected?-
Presently living in India - paying a high rent (the whole lot 1 year in advance) for a upper middle class Apartment.... Now it's monsoon time: when it rains outside...., it also rains inside! - considering that I have six storeys above my apartment.... - so far for shoddiness! (and the necessary frustration to get it properly fixed....)-

The signs of graft are there for all to see...already a gigantic luxury toilet rises up in defence colony with air conditioning,oaintings on the wall... the stadia are leaking...connaught circus has become exactly that...a circus..
I guess i must agree with mani shankar aiyar when he said that he hoped the games wouldn't work out...atleast then there would be public pressure to arrest and prosecute a whole cohort of guilty officials

Long live Congress ! Known for corruption and building the 'party fund' the whole mess is a legacy of Congress. Precisely how India has perenially under achieved thanks to majority rule of Post Independent India by Congress party.

Mr. Kalmadi, a congress placement, after the allegations says he will resign if Singh or Sonia ask him to leave. Congress says he is not a congress placement / representative. I like this ability to distance onself from own responsibility and preach good actions as a 'third party'. Our dutiful press takes 'notes' from what the govt wants and publishes it.

I wonder where is the 'youth' icon Rahul ghandy (not Gandhi) coming to the rescue of CWG. sports are meant to be for the 'young'. Rahul and all the 2nd gen Congress 'kids' are Absent. No prior experience is a good thing in India. You cannot be judged / evaluated.

The foul mouthed, bad mannered Manish Tiwari is often out to 'tangle' the view of public and he has carefully managed to hold Congress 'out of all this' by creating a web of illusory metaphors, facts and stories. He even has the cheeck to blame 'BJP' for winning the CWG bid. COngress party ruled India and Delhi for the last 7 years (since bid was won) and they can get away with it. Poor Ravishankar prasad and other BJP reps dont have a straight face to hold fort in face of such attach from likes of Tiwari. No need to mention the 'support' lead TV presenters Rajdeep (CNNIBN), Barkha (NDTV), Times now(Arnab) accord to Congress spokespersons. If the Umpire is your game is yours. In the next government Manish tiwari will get a good cabinet portfolio or a governorship (a great reward mechanism for Congress loyalists) like Kapil Sibal who did a gr8 job defending congress between 2006-2009.

I still believe the games will be a success. Knowing congress they will have a 'ace' up their sleeve to hire a world class builder / contractor to ensure 'completion' at high rates. A software engineer once told me the 'inverse keynesian model to get promotions'. First, do a bad job (useless code etc), let the fire begin and then douse it ..Make a mess, clean it and become a hero). How about lalit modi ? Atleast he gave good games. Congress will chuckle.

Congress has carefully played a 'portfolio of goof-ups strategy' on straight forward opposition. They let loose multiple good-ups - CWG, Kahsmir, Dow / Bhopal, Pakistan 'diplomacy', Food rotting in open, price rise, Naxals, Sohrabuddin encounter, Train tragedies' . Poor opposition cannot decide which one to fight. SO they fight one on each day never to reach conclusion or corner the govt.

In all this it is the Congress party that is the beneficary. Another Independence day, against the backdrop of all this, makes me wonder would it have been better if British continued to rule India ? (This is not e emotional statement, my dear fellow countrymen see the sense , not the english in this post). I am happy the Queen is not coming.

But just last month India opened to the public T3 which was completed in a record 37 months at a cost of Rs 12700 crores.

Delhi Metro is another example of Indian democratic efficiency.

ISRO's various achievement is another example.

One must remember that Indian democracy is a poor country democracy. So this should not be compared with developed country's democracy. It should no way be compared with dictarorship where things are done under fear (case of China).

Here in India even if we take bribe we take it without fear!

What's the Commonwealth? What's its use? Why does it exist? And why is India still in it? Yes, the villager, laborer and office-worker are furious that a leech from a far-away country is not gracing everyone with her presence...

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This article also conveniently forgets to mention that many "International Class-A" athletes (like World/Olympics 100 m champion , M. BOLT) are NOT taking part in these Games

It's unlikely that things will fall into place. The gap now is too wide at too many parts and whatever has been done is also crumbling.
It's a shame all right but it won't change anything...

commonweath Games is a national disaster fro India. The man who claims it is is his baby , now tries to absolve of all the crimes committed in the name of the Commonwealth Games. Though the Queen of England has expressed her displeasure over the corruption , the de facto Queen of India,of Italia Origin, is keeping a stoic silence.As you said, we Indians are very good in organising things at the last minute, with all the resulting confusion and the people of India will after all enjoy the great Tamasha and will forget the corruption oncve the game is over. That is what the the Queen and her party waiting for too

Only technology will erase corruption in India. Let the middleman go, that is the only solution to this problem. The most to benefit are the contractors on big infrastructure projects. They devour ceaselessly and replace cheap material for the original so that the cost difference can be adjusted.

The trouble in India is that we don't have accountability of the tax payers money. Where the up-coming British Olympics have their finances neatly chalked out (National Lottery etc) and the big symbolic stadium is coming up on the seedy part of East London where unemployment rate and crime is high, India didn't have any such financial plans laid out for public's perusal.

We need outcry. We need a voice and that too a collective one.

You don't mention the substantial death toll...which is maybe suprising as it is something quantifiable so it's within the Economist's remit.

Usually, in any showcase event in any country, that country concerned will make every effort to cover up whatever shortcomings (which country doesn't have any?) and put on a pretty face. Not apparently India.

An answer (though it will be too late in this case) wud have been to privatise the organising of the games entirely. Aren't the opposition and the usual chattering classes in India aware that something like such a looming disaster is bound to happen and done something positive to avert it?

Or are the opposition and the usual critics part of the problem? It's too convenient to blame such things on India's democracy or how it is a poor-country democracy. The problem, I think, is that India is a democracy largely answerable only to the poor masses and defended by the thinking urban elite. I guess such outrages will have to reach truly crisis proportions before things will ever change for the better and that may be a very long time coming.

"""You don't mention the substantial death toll...which is maybe suprising as it is something quantifiable so it's within the Economist's remit."""

That is a good point. Many people (all low caste) have died building all this. Not to mention all the money spent, which could have been spend in other ways
http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/55867/2010/05/15-144521-1.htm
http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=156500

By the looks of it the omens are that the Commonwealth Games may be a failure or a relative success.

Whatever - and I can only hope all will fall in place by October - the government, India's business community as well as concerned citizens should raise every right question carefully tracking every right answer to full effect.
Indians cannot or should not continually provide self-satisfying answers to endemic problems that never get addressed.
As the country grows richer with increased levels of economic maturity so must social expectation and accountability from top down.

There's of course a great deal at stake when a country puts up a grand sporting event, be it international prestige or more homely the actual ability to do it and do it right.
I believe the latter is India's biggest challenge as the case is yet to be made whether or not the country delivers on schedule, on quality, on organization and on budget.

On graft, price distortion, last minute overpricing, foot-dragging, technical and assembly flaws - does it really make any difference commenting?

..

...Queen Victoria,= "I am not amused..."

...Queen Elizabeth="I am not amused & neither am I attending the show

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I have to disagree on the infrastructure project.

The Delhi Metro appears to be a shining example of Indias successes. its clean, efficient and has automated announcements in English. The extensions are also all being completed in good time.

Its definitely comparable to the other metros in Asia which are all also built to a very high standard.

It’s correct for the Economist to state that: “INDIAN officials insist that the Commonwealth games, to which Delhi plays host in October, should not be compared to Beijing’s Olympic games. They are right.”

They are correct in my view also not because it’s India or China. Given its huge resources available today India can do a Delhi Olympic games just as successful and spectacular as 2008 Beijing Olympics if it wants to.

But the Commonwealth Games is simply no Olympic Game and far from it, and there’s no need to be one either.

I think Indian organizer of Commonwealth Games made the right decision not to make too much of a big deal of it via over spending except for some infrastructures in dire need in Delhi anyway.

But don’t be too harsh about its preparation. Like with many big projects or events, regardless how chaotic and laggard it appears in the process, it somehow almost always come together in the nick of time just before the opening, like with the 2004 Olympics in Athens or as the article said about the preparation of weddings.

Call it unraveling of human potential under the gun, or clockwork camouflaged in deceptive discords, the Almighty does things in its mysterious ways.

Being perhaps the last symbolism of British empire legacy, the Queen should definitely attend the Game nonetheless.

2010 Games obviously cannot and should not be compared with the 2008 Olympics. Both are work put together by two different way of functioning. 2008 games were a result of stringent, communist style of working whereas 2010 games will be a result of lethargic, democratic way of work. Obviously democratic pace will be more sluggish having lot of offices involved and everyone passing the buck to another. But there would definitely be less human right violation in latter case.

Of course, there is no denial to the fact that blatant corruption has brought shame to India. And despite being an indian I would wish to see commonwealth games a devastating failure. Because a success will ensure a safe escape passage for all the venal officials involved. No culprit should escape unscathed.

Dr. Singh is a respected individual, and I think he is faced with a very difficult task. Now criticism of India's lack of preparedness has reached a fever pitch. Opposition parties are zooming in on the countless controversies surrounding this event.

But lack of preparedness is nothing new, and definitely not unique to India. Let's not forget Athens 2004, Torino 2006, and South Africa 2010. Observers criticized all of these events as "not on schedule" and for their perceived lack of preparedness. But they all eventually delievered under pressure.

At the same time, we must face the facts. India's new elites desperately want the world to see a country that is an emerging superpower. Conversations with these people usually end up regressing into citations of superlative economic statistics, future projections, comparisons with China (of which India always gets the upper hand somehow), as well as pride in historical achievements. They want people to see the "most expensive property developments in the world" in Mumbai, not its nearby slums, and for this reason they even criticized Slumdog Millionaire for depicting India in such a poor (read: real) light.

Sammysenior is absolutely correct to say that India's elites are so terribly delusional about the state of their own country. They should focus on solving some of its most basic problems, such as poor infrastructure, lack of sanitation, health care, caste-based discrimination, linguistic unity, education, and in general, the cleanliness of city streets. K Stephen says that in China things are only done out of fear. More delusion. Things are done with incentives in China (i.e. money), like they are in any burgeoning capitalist society. He is merely trying to capitalize his argument, like so many before him, on India's supposed "superiority" because it happens to run on a democratic political system. Unfortunately this argument no longer has much strength; in large developing countries, an authoritarian system can concentrate resources and solve large problems better than ineffecient bureacracy and democratic governance. The Economist takes it seriously enough to even hold a debate on whether the "China model" is better than that of the West! (Not India)

On developmental terms, India is at least a century behind the Western world still, and a few decades behind China. Remember that in 1978, when economic reforms began in China, China was actually poorer than India; now it is about four times wealthier on per capita terms.

But look at the rhetoric of China's elite: we are still a developing country, much poorer than the developed world. Our priorities are to reduce the wealth gap, raise migrant worker's salaries, and mechanize agriculture.

At this rate China is pulling ahead of India significantly, and the distance between the two is actually increasing. Anyone who has been to Beijing and Shanghai will tell you that it is a world apart from Mumbai and Kolkata.

What India needs is a reality check.