India is doing its best to hold Commonwealth Games: Journalist

India, within the limitations of its financial resources, workforce skills, pressing competing demands and probable corruption, has done the best it can to organize the XIXth Commonwealth Games in Delhi, feels a senior journalist.

Andrew Stevenson, a senior writer, who will be in India to cover the Commonwealth Games for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, says that while the event may not be as good as it would have been in Edinburgh, Adelaide or Auckland, people from all walks of life coming to see the games and India, should savor the moment and "make the best of whatever happens".

He says professional sporting competitions have been pushed - by nationalism, science, government funding and private sponsorship - to a level beyond the ken of normal people in even advanced nations in the West, with athletes devoting years of their lives to improving their performance.

He says such competitions are a "world beyond ours", but still a world of people whose hearts beat with the same dreams as ours and who take great pleasure from the nations of the Commonwealth taking part in their games."

He says that the inevitable question will always be asked about whether the Commonwealth Games should be held or whether it should be continued.

The answer to that, he says is "that its stature has diminished by ever-expanding international competition and world championships."

"But it is a different question than whether we should refuse, at the very last moment, the invitation to compete to Delhi," he concludes.