Let us begin with a straightforward question: Are you for the Commonwealth Games, or against? Straightforward and simple, you might say. Everybody is against the wretched Games, and so, of course, am I. Think again.
You didn’t hate the CWG until two weeks ago. In fact, you were proud that your country, and its capital, was holding a major competitive event and, as a consequence, it was getting a long-overdue makeover. Hoardings and newspaper advertisements were coming up, drilling basic lessons in civic sense: how to treat foreign tourists with dignity, keeping the city clean, etc, etc. For at least three years, as much of our city was dug up to build the Metro, flyovers and new roads, we responded with a grin-and-bear attitude. This was becoming a quantum upgrade, and you had begun to see results already, particularly with the arrival of new, low-floor and spacier buses, the opening of new sections of the Metro. At least one major problem of the city, commuting for the poor and the middle classes, was being addressed. We felt great when the new airport was opened, within schedule. All the old stadia were covered in scaffolding and everybody knew they were being renovated. Meanwhile, work was moving on new power plants to feed Delhi with more than 3, 000 MW. Not only were we not complaining about any of this, we were indeed pleased that the Commonwealth Games had become such a gift to India’s capital. So what went so wrong in just two weeks?
The surfacing of allegations that oodles of money is being made in the name of Commonwealth Games. The cause of the Games was not helped by the fact that Kalmadi and his cohorts look like the usual suspects even in the most usual of times. But these are not even usual times. The government has handed over to his Organising Committee nearly Rs 2,500 crore and a stink has begun to rise over how some of it is being spent, or stolen. In fact, a disclosure is in order that four of the first stories that built this ‘hawa’ of corruption were broken by the reporters of The Indian Express (Ritu Sarin on Kalmadi’s son’s purported share in the new Formula 1 track in Noida, Sobhana K. on the alleged platinum ring import, the commissions paid out to SMAM, and how PSUs were being arm-twisted to commit large amounts in sponsorship). Frankly, while these stories did paint a disturbing picture of the goings-on in the Organising Committee, we had never imagined that these would ultimately lead to a campaign of abuse and calumny that would paint the very Games as evil.
The way the campaign against these Games has been run underlines the dangers of what twitterisation of journalism can do. “Sab chor hain” is a popular line in our country. But to say that the entire Games are a multi-ten thousand crore scam just because there’s evidence of some theft (which does not add up to more than a crore or two at the most) is a horrible self-goal for India. Yes, it looks really bad if you hear that 35, 40, 50 or at last count (JD-U’s Sharad Yadav in the Lok Sabha) one lakh crore are being spent on a mere sporting extravaganza. Then it begins to look so utterly outrageous when you believe that all this money is being spent under the watch of Suresh Kalmadi and his buccaneers who are accountable to none. But please examine this story in the cold light of facts.
Elsewhere in our paper today our reporters give you the entire, detailed beak-up of the moneys spent on the Games and related projects. If you add all the agencies (the Delhi government, the sports ministry, the MCD, Kalmadi’s OC, the NDMC), the total amount would indeed come close to Rs 40,000 crore. But how is it broken up? Rs 16,887 crore is for phase II of the Metro. Rs 1,800 crore is for the new buses for the DTC and Rs 400 crore for the construction of new bus depots. Rs 12,000 crore is for the new power plants. Another Rs 4,000 crore go into other crucial infrastructure upgrades in Delhi, almost all inevitable, including the sewage and drainage systems under the new, expanded airport. Frankly, 85 per cent of all expense incurred has nothing to do with the CWG and is going into entirely virtuous development (though there is the odd gem like Rs 30 crore for potted plants). The Games, if anything, have become a wonderful antidote to the usual delays and corruption. A look at the list of expenses will tell you that almost everything has been completed way below the budgeted figure. Do such things happen in India, except with the Delhi Metro? They usually don’t, because there are long delays and cost overruns. The CWG deadline has prevented any delays beyond a month or two (the only disgrace being the NDMC with its relatively minor projects, like the Connaught Place upgrade). Of the Rs 4,459 crore sanctioned directly for the CWG, Rs 2,904 crore is being spent directly by the ministry of sports, mostly on stadium upgrade. And whatever else you may say about M.S. Gill, nobody would ever say that he stole a paisa, or let anybody steal, under his watch. Not even Mani Shankar Aiyar will say that. Another Rs 827 crore is being spent by the ministry of urban development for visible projects. The questions, and the problem, lie with the Rs 2,394 crore given over to Kalmadi’s OC. That is what the government now needs to put under a strict watch. That is the commitment you need from the prime minister in Parliament.
It is nobody’s case that leakage or corruption may still not have happened. But why blame the Games for that? And why build this mass opprobrium against them? There is corruption also in purchases of defence equipment. You try to catch the thieves, of course, but do you stop buying weapons? Disband your armies? Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater is old common sense. But in this case, we are throwing out the baby, but keeping the bathwater.
Demonising the Commonwealth Games just because people made money in some deals (the London limo deal, by the way, was worth a total of Rs 1.7 crore, so you can guess how much money someone would have made from it) is indeed colossal stupidity. It also highlights this worrying twitterisation of our profession where you charge without checking, and then use a broad brush dripping with black to paint whatever you feel like. Or run with viewer/reader comments like: I won’t go to the Games because the stadiums are so unsafe there will be a risk to my life.
There is no argument that sporting events of this size and prestige are important to nations. The Congress leadership, which has dumped these Games on their squabbling functionaries, some of whom nurse vicious mutual antagonisms, would do well to remember the way Indira Gandhi showed commitment to Asiad ’82, with her call of “India can do it”. She was honoured by Juan Antonio Samaranch, the then IOC chief, with the Golden Olympic Order, the first Asian and the first woman to receive it. Now her party takes great pride in withdrawing from the 2018 Asiad bid as if India cannot do in 2018 what it could 36 and 68 years earlier (1982 and 1950). And all because you do not like Suresh Kalmadi’s face.
These Games must be saved, from Suresh Kalmadi, and from the rest of us feral beasts (apologies to Tony Blair). Indira Gandhi threw her son, then just over 35 and so new to politics, into Asiad ’82 and it became his launch pad and one of his finest moments. This has been done around the world. In the US, Mitt Romney built a national profile by organising a great Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Obama himself went to lobby for the 2016 Olympics. Here, we take on the responsibility of conducting our biggest sporting event so far, and can get no one higher than our sports minister to defend them, and that too apologetically. How far backwards we have slipped in the three decades since Indira and Rajiv Gandhi.