A month away, India seeks a Commonwealth Games miracle

The Commonwealth Games are often known as the “friendly games” but New Delhi has little to smile about one month before the opening ceremony.

The city has undertaken huge infrastructure improvements ahead of the October 3 opening, ranging from building new metro lines and flyovers to renovating whole urban districts.

But with time ticking away, many of the civic projects are far from finished, and fears are growing that the sports venues will not be up to international competition standards.

The Commonwealth Games Federation has repeatedly warned organisers that ongoing work at stadiums has delayed the installation of electronic equipment essential for the smooth running of events.

Barefoot migrant workers toil at new metro stations and at rubble-strewn venues across the city, struggling to make progress as unusually heavy monsoon rains have hit in recent weeks.

Poor ticket sales, a lack of sponsors, security fears, corruption scandals and a major outbreak of dengue fever have also filled India’s newspapers with tales of woe.

The organising committee and the government are putting on a brave face, but hopes have faded that Delhi would bathe in the same type of positive light that Beijing enjoyed during the Olympic Games in 2008.

On Wednesday, a Times of India poll reported that 76 percent of Delhi residents felt the estimated three-billion-dollar cost of the Games was unjustified, and 50 percent said preparations had severely disrupted their lives.

“It would be an understatement to describe the situation as alarming. It is calamitous,” the Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed senior official as saying.

Many of the delays have been blamed on crooked construction deals, while safety certificates for new buildings were also alleged to have been faked.

Best-selling author Chetan Bhagat, writing recently in the Times, urged the public to boycott the Games to protest against the “most blatant exercise in corruption in independent India’s history”.