New Delhi: As India prepares to host the Commonwealth Games in 2030, Gujarat has vowed not to repeat 2010’s mistakes and instead “lay the foundations for the next 100 years,” Sean Ingle reports in The Guardian. With India targeting a bid for the 2036 Summer Olympics, organisers stressed the Gujarat games would prove that the country can organise a large multi-sport event without hiccups.
The 2010 Games, held in Delhi, were marred by multiple issues: an official complaint about swimming pool water so murky that swimmers struggled to see, a malfunctioning security barrier that speared the car of Uganda’s chef de mission and left him hospitalised, and even cobras in the athletes’ village, the report says.
This time, however, authorities insist they will be prepared.
Gujarat Principal Secretary Ashwini Kumar even defended the 2010 games as among the best ever hosted in the country, according to The Guardian.
He said, “The 2010 Games were one of the best Games that were hosted. But there were some challenges. This time, we are well prepared. The organising committee is going to be established within a month or so and our fundamentals are very strong.”
Most of the venues, he said, were already ready. “Funding has been secured. The budgets have been very meticulously worked out. And we are very confident that we will deliver a Games which you will remember in years to come,” he added.
A few states apart, in Delhi, BBC’s Nikita Yadav, Vikas Pandey and Nikhil Inamdar report on pollution’s debilitating effects on the city’s most vulnerable—children.
Khushboo Bharti, 31, says she shudders every time she remembers the night of 13 November, when she had to rush her one-year-old daughter Samaira to the emergency, the report says. At the hospital, the toddler was treated with strong steroid nebulisation and remained on oxygen support for two days. She was later diagnosed with pneumonia.
Other fearful parents told the BBC about “lethal air” and the “irrevocable damage” it can wreak. “Research over the years has highlighted the devastating impact air pollution is having on young children across the world—leading to stunted development, weaker immunity and lower cognitive ability,” the report says.
“These children are consistently exposed to high degrees of pollution so their lung defence systems are reduced. If you fail to treat such childhood infections, it can cause permanent damage to the lungs,” a doctor was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, The New York Times published an obituary of Dharmendra—an actor of “easygoing machismo” who played “swoon-worthy romantic leads”. At 89, he died in Mumbai on 24 November. Dharmendra, nicknamed ‘He-Man’ for his rugged appeal, appeared in more than 300 productions. He started in romance dramas aimed at mostly female audiences in the early 1960s but soon shifted to male-oriented action fare, which remained one of his primary genres amid forays into comedy, the report says.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
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