Concerns India will lose face over Commonwealth Games

The games were meant to showcase a rising India; instead, they may end up being a major embarrassment

QUEEN ELIZABETH will not inaugurate the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in October – the first time she has missed the event in four decades. Instead, she is sending Prince Charles to represent her as head of the colonial grouping.

The queen cited an overfull calendar as the reason for her absence from the games, which run from October 3rd to 14th.

She will miss an event billed domestically as one that promises to showcase a rising India but that so far promises to be anything but a celebration of the country’s progress.

It is questionable whether the British monarch is genuinely busy or whether she is wary of inaugurating an event which, a mere 120 days away, is far from ready and has the real potential to be an embarrassment.

The games, worth more than $3 billion (€2.44 billion), were considered an opportunity to display the “new India”, with its impressive economic growth rate and rising status as an Asian power. Instead, there is now a desperate scramble to prevent the event from becoming a humiliating failure.

Several sporting venues including the main track and field stadium, the swimming venue and the participants’ residential village complex are far from ready. Indeed, most of the Commonwealth Games sites across Delhi are besieged with cranes and open pits and rife with desultory building activity nowhere near completion.

Numerous road and rail overpasses required to ferry athletes and spectators through Delhi’s chaotic traffic are simply cement pillars supporting nothing.

Badly needed infrastructure that would ensure the smooth running of the games is also pitifully behind schedule, with at least half of 20 critical bridges and overpasses in all likelihood abandoned.

The revised December 31st, 2009, deadline for the completion of most of the work was deferred to the end of March, but this too has been pushed back to even closer to the games’ inauguration.

Commonwealth Games organising committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi conceded in a newspaper interview yesterday that construction work would “drag on” to the end of June but that too seems an overly optimistic assessment.

Plans to construct thousands of hotel rooms for guests have been jettisoned in favour of ad-hoc B&Bs – triggering fears that these “poor man’s Olympics” featuring 71 former British colonial states and territories could end up being mortifying for India.

This, in turn, would further inflame the country’s inferiority complex with regard to neighbouring nuclear, commercial and economic rival China, globally feted for hosting the near-flawless 2008 Beijing Olympics with all sporting, residential and spectator facilities ready in plenty of time to carry out rehearsals and resolve glitches.

Delhi will go straight into the Commonwealth Games without the luxury of dry runs in the majority of its hastily built venues.

In their mad scramble to meet long-delayed deadlines, the authorities have dropped plans to clean up several city slums, opting instead to plant bamboo groves to shield them.

The much-touted “civilising campaign” of levying fines on commonplace activities such as littering, urinating, defecating and spitting in public places has also been abandoned.

So have plans to teach taxi drivers, waiters and security staff English and international etiquette to make the participants feel comfortable.

Indian officials have repeatedly placated the panicky Commonwealth Games Federation with the well-practised line that the run-up to October’s sporting fest is akin to an Indian wedding: initially chaotic and disorganised but eventually majestic and orderly.

They insist the federation is missing a few tricks, unable to see India’s delayed genius at work.

If that were not enough, it now transpires that catering contracts for the games’ village are yet to be awarded, with not enough time for the awardees to erect their elaborate kitchens designed to feed thousands of athletes.

Security, too, poses a major challenge. The games are being conducted against the backdrop of a deteriorating internal security environment marked by a rising wave of regional extremist fundamentalism and increasing attacks by Maoists.

Various Islamist groups have threatened to disrupt the games. Though India has pledged tight security, anxiety persists, with dependence on massive security at sporting venues rather than advance work in “neutralising” potential threats.

As a further security measure, the authorities have ordered the closure of all educational institutions for the duration of the games. A fiat has also been issued for all shops, offices and business establishments to shut during the opening and closing ceremonies.

“The authorities will declare an unofficial curfew in Delhi for the duration of the games,” says

Delhi-based fashion designer Rita Paul, adding that it will be hell for the fortnight of the games and better to leave the city during that time.