Delhi dampener on cards for Commonwealth Games

The sporting event which India hoped would herald its emergence as a regional power and serve as a springboard to an Olympic bid has instead turned into a chaotic mess.

Less than seven weeks before New Delhi is to host to the Commonwealth Games, venues are still under construction, top officials have been forced out in scandal, costs have soared and many are questioning the wisdom of spending so much money on an event in a nation riddled with social ills.

To make matters worse, many top athletes, including Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter, pulled out and even England’s Queen Elizabeth II has said she will not come to the Games, which brings together 71 countries of the Commonwealth, or the former British Empire.

After China showcased its economic clout during an impressive Beijing Olympics, India’s Commonwealth Games organisers were under pressure to deliver a comparable spectacle to promote “India Rising”.

Instead, the bungling of the preparations for the Games has highlighted corruption and malaise that continues to plague the nation, said Harsh V Pant, a political analyst. “When it comes to implementation, I don’t think India has moved an inch from where we used to be,” he said.

Hoping to stem the cascade of problems, Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, stepped in last weekend, ordering a probe and appointing a group of cabinet ministers to oversee the final preparations and try to salvage the event.

The move came as criticism of the Games, to be held in New Delhi from October 3 to 14, reached fever pitch, with everything from traffic jams to mosquito breeding blamed on preparations.

The Times of India showed Shera, the Games’ cartoon tiger mascot, on a respirator, and a former sports minister publicly hoped the Games would collapse in disarray so India would not be tempted to bid for future events.

Sheila Dikshit, Delhi’s chief minister, called the broadsides “unpatriotic”. “I plead with people to look at the better side of the Games – the rest will fall into place,” she told The Sunday Express.

But the problems are hard to ignore. Venues that were supposed to be completed last year to allow for test events, are still in what officials promise is the final phase of construction.

The Shivaji stadium in central Delhi, which is to be used as a practice field for hockey teams, has been stripped down, its facade left with gaping holes as hundreds of workers navigated large piles of red bricks, gray concrete blocks and rusting reinforcing rods.

A four-kilometre road-bridge connecting the athletes’ village to the main stadium has gaps in it. “We have to accept where we are and look forward,” Mike Hooper, the CEO of the Commonwealth Games Federation, who is in New Delhi helping oversee the preparations, said. “Everyone’s got a lot of work to do, and that’s what they’ve got to focus on.”

Much of central Delhi remains torn up by projects that had been intended to beautify the city for the 100,000 foreign tourists the Games committee had anticipated. Many of the projects are so far behind schedule they are being covered up, to be worked on again after the event. And there are doubts the tourists are even coming.

The cost of hosting the Games – which the government initially pegged at less than $100 million (Dh367m) in 2003 – has skyrocketed, with estimates ranging from $3 billion to more than $10 billion.

Meanwhile, ticket sales have been delayed, sponsorships have not met expectations and the official merchandiser has pulled out, saying delays in launching his products were costing him unbearable losses. On Thursday, two power companies announced they were cancelling their multi-million dollar sponsorship deals with the event.

Three top officials were sacked this month over alleged financial irregularities with the London launching of the Queen’s Baton Relay – a month-long odyssey akin to the Olympic torch relay.

As part of a drive to clean up the city ahead of the event, the government demolished thousands of slum homes and arrested homeless people, according to a coalition of human rights groups.

The event has turned into an embarrassment for a country that should be focusing instead on fixing its medical and education system and dealing with the hundreds of millions mired in poverty, said Rajan Singh, 29, a software engineer. “With a developing country like India, we need to invest in other infrastructure,” he said. “Once that is complete, we can go for Games like this.”