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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | As Games Begin, India Hopes to Save Its Pride by Jim Yardley

As Games Begin, India Hopes to Save Its Pride by Jim Yardley

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published Published on Oct 12, 2010   modified Modified on Oct 12, 2010

When India  won its bid for the 2010 Commonwealth Games seven years ago, the event instantly became an emblem of national prestige. But as the country prepares to open the games on Sunday evening, an opportunity to burnish its global image has instead become a national embarrassment.

The litany of problems plaguing the games — collapsed footbridges, filthy dorms, cartoonish corruption — have not only made headlines around the world. They have left Indians to wonder why a country so promising in so many regards is incapable of organizing a signature event when the eyes of the world are focused on it.

The answer, to many of those involved with the games, is that India’s political culture, if prized for its commitment to democracy, often seems unable to transcend its own dysfunction. There were at least 21 governmental or quasi-governmental agencies involved in preparing for the games, yet none were ultimately in charge, forcing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to try to personally take command as things went awry in August. Analysts say the absence of a clear line of authority translated into an absence of urgency and accountability.

Moreover, crucial figures in organizing the games had almost no experience in staging international events and were products of an insular Indian political culture where cronyism and nepotism often trump competence.

More than a year ago, audits warned that preparations for the games were shamefully behind schedule. “Slackness in addressing these challenges may create major embarrassments for the country,” one report added.

That is indeed what happened. Top officials, meanwhile, have lashed out, sometimes against one another, defending their work while blaming others for the broader breakdown as India’s hyperactive media have gleefully documented the infighting.

“I think we have managed everything extremely well,” said Tejendra Khanna, the lieutenant governor of New Delhi, as he exited the athletes’ village on Wednesday after a quick tour of the emergency cleaning operation that began after arriving athletes complained about filthy bathrooms. “Extremely well.”

It did not look that way to much of the rest of the world, nor to many Indians. Preparations for the games have been so badly managed that in recent weeks a footbridge near the main stadium collapsed, injuring 27; the deputy chief of the games called the athletes’ dorms “uninhabitable”; several nations threatened to pull out, and some elite athletes have, put off by reports of lax preparations or concerns about the threat of terrorism.

Indian newspapers have carried accounts of graft and extravagance, with reports of $80 rolls of toilet paper, $61 soap dispensers and $125 first aid kits. Even last week, workers were rushing to pave roads, plant greenery and finish cleanup work outside different sites. Some stadiums still have never been tested.

The Commonwealth Games is a quadrennial competition for nations of the former British Empire, a second-tier event that became infused with a geopolitical buzz when India was selected as the host.

The inevitable comparisons with China’s staging of the 2008 Summer Olympics elevated the stakes; India’s bureaucratic efficiency was being tested as much as its athletes. It did not fare well.

China had the authoritarian advantage of being able to bulldoze historic neighborhoods, relocate large numbers of people by fiat and order a state press to write happy stories. It also spent an estimated $43 billion. Indian organizers, meanwhile, slogged through protracted litigation over the site of the athletes’ village and controversies over building roads too close to existing homes.

But beyond the public relations fallout, what has stirred middle-class anger and even brought an ad hominem rebuke from India’s Supreme Court is the way many aspects of a project advertised as transformative for residents of New Delhi have been wasted.

Some civic improvement projects like a restoration of the Old Delhi shopping district or a renovation of Connaught Place either never got off the ground or were never completed. Roadwork has been poorly done in many places, with potholes proliferating in the heavy rains.

“You see the mismanagement all around,” said Jaya Kakkar, a professor of history at the Shyam Lal College of Delhi University. “There is no accountability. Every day they say all is well, but all is not well. We are paying for all this, and this is what we are getting? These games have become a national shame.”

Indian officials are still hoping to salvage the event, and some national pride, once the actual competitions are under way, assuming all goes smoothly before the Oct. 14 closing ceremony. But the aftertaste of the chaotic prelude will be hard to remove.

“It cannot be a brilliant games,” said Boria Majumdar, a scholar of Indian sports and the author of the recent book “The Sellotape Legacy: Delhi and the Commonwealth Games.” “That opportunity is lost.”

When New Delhi bid for the games, the scale of the project sounded relatively modest, with a budget of about $210 million. Almost any host city for an international event experiences cost overruns, but New Delhi’s expenditures have soared.

In a critical July 2009 report, the comptroller and auditor general of India found that costs had risen to roughly $2.8 billion from the original estimate of $210 million, not including the billions spent on improvements to the airport and the city’s rapid transit system. More than a year later, that figure is considered low. Mr. Majumdar, who has documented 114 budget increases since the 2003 bid, estimated that the total cost was $15.5 billion — a figure disputed by the sports minister.

The rising costs were not matched by improved performance. The 2009 audit report documented an array of bureaucratic failings and missed deadlines: it found that 19 sites were behind schedule and predicted that organizers would struggle to complete work on several of them before the games.

Of 20 bridge and road projects deemed critical to the games, 11 were graded as significantly behind schedule. Much of the overall planning work, expected to be complete by May 2006, was still incomplete in 2008.

To some degree, these delays can be attributed to bad luck, like this year’s record monsoon rains. They can also be traced to political opposition to certain projects, litigation filed by environmental groups and resistance from some city regulatory agencies in granting clearances.

By late 2008 and early 2009, a timetable organized to take seven years was fast being compressed, with different governmental agencies overseeing different stadium or infrastructure projects.

The audit report warned that “much time has been lost and it is imperative to move forward with the newfound sense of urgency tempered by the realization that crashing of timelines and bunching of decisions carry with it the heightened risk of compromising transparency, accountability and structural safety of the venues.”

With money sloshing around and a race to complete the stadiums, allegations of corruption began to surface. The audit report had identified irregularities in the bidding for national and international broadcasting rights and found that the winning consultant had failed to deliver promised revenues, resulting in losses of $11.3 million.

Earlier this year, as opposition parties seized on allegations of corruption against Suresh Kalmadi, the head of the organizing committee, as well as others beneath him, Mr. Singh and Sonia Gandhi, president of the governing Congress Party, promised a full investigation after the games. Last week, The Indian Express reported that 38 employees of the organizing committee had relatives also working for the agency. Four nephews of one vice chairman work for the group.

“This is just a coincidence,” one official told The Express.

Perhaps the most debilitating problem has been the absence of any linear command structure, as different governmental bodies, as well as the independent Organizing Committee, each claim responsibility for pieces of the project, with no one claiming responsibility for the entire thing.

“We don’t know who is in charge,” complained Sandeep Dikshit, a member of Parliament, as he stood inside the athletes’ village on Wednesday. “That is the problem.”

Mr. Dikshit’s diagnosis is especially interesting since his mother, Sheila Dikshit, is the chief minister overseeing the New Delhi government, one of the agencies responsible for preparations.

The New York Times, 2 October, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/world/asia/03india.html?_r=1&scp=10&sq=india&st=cse


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