Projecting the ‘first Green Commonwealth Games'

Highlighting the preparations for the XIX Commonwealth Games in New Delhi from October 3 and the sporting achievements of all-time great sportspersons in the country, the Commonwealth Games Express arrived to a rousing reception at Thiruvananthapuram Central on Wednesday.

The Commonwealth Games, a special exhibition on wheels, that chugged into platform one of the Central station from Madurai was received by Additional Divisional Railway Manager Ashok Kumar and Officer on Special Duty (Sports) K.M. Beenamol, who is the captain of the four-day Kerala leg tour, and railway officials. Rathan U. Kelkar, Director, Kerala State IT Mission, Mervin Alexander, CEO Technopark and Korath V. Mathew, Director, Akshaya, were also present.

It was the 63 {+r} {+d} day of the 101-day-long journey of the train and the Central station was the 30 {+t} {+h} stopover of the Commonwealth Games Express, a sports and ICT exposition on wheels jointly by the Union Ministry of Railways and the Department of Information Technology of Union Government.

The green coloured special exhibition train consists of 11 coaches out of which 5 coaches have been allocated to the Railway Sports Promotion Board to showcase the history of CWG, details of venues of the events to be held in October, to spread the general awareness of different sports and to give wide publicity to the sports icons who have brought laurels to the country.

The mascot of the Delhi Commonwealth Games, Shera, was the star attraction as people lined up to pose alongside the Royal Bengal Tiger and take photographs. A map depicting the route travelled by the Queens Baton traversing 71 cities before it reaches Delhi on October 3 and the logo story and the history behind ‘Shera' is detailed.

Incidentally, the CWG in Delhi is the first ‘Green CW Games'. The reasons listed out for this — it saves water, uses less energy and is non-polluting. The games village, that can accommodate 8,000 athletes, is made of green architecture. In addition, 3,500 CFL lamps, integrated waste management system and water recycling is used for make it a Green sporting event.

The exhibition also provides complete details of the venues, games, seating capacity of the venues, showcases Indian sportspersons, including medal winners of CWG 2006 and Asian Games. The scaled down models of the newly constructed sports stadiums in New Delhi and the preparations in the nation's capital for the games are included.

All information pertaining to 17 sports disciplines being played in the Commonwealth Games are included. Besides the description of each sport, equipments, history behind the game, interesting information and important facts are included. The “Lawn Balls' on display was among the exhibits.

The exhibition has a special section dedicated to the Railway Sports Promotion Board to showcase its history, activities as well as achievements at the national and international level.

The coaches from 6 to 11 tell about different facets of Information and Communication technology (ICT), each of them dealing with a particular facet. The first coach presents an overview of ICT, how it has impacted the life of common man. An interesting aspect in the sixth coach is the story of communication over the years — from smoke signals to SMS and e-mails.

The second coach displays the cohesion of efforts taken by the Department of Information Technology and several other organisations in the sphere of ICT, their contributions towards bringing ICT to the common man and efforts to build IT Superpower. National e-Governance Plan, a major initiative towards the concept of good governance, is the focal point.

The third coach is about the impact of ICT in social, health, education, agriculture and ecology while the fourth coach presents ICT from the perspective of industries. The fifth coach revolves around Common Service Centre, an initiative to provide a platform to the people to access various information and services as well as interface between the Government and citizens.

From Thiruvananthapuram central, the Commonwealth Express will move to Kollam (platform 4, August 27) and from there to Ernakulam Junction on August 28 (platform 1). From Ernakulam junction, the exhibition train will proceed to Mysore.