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Monsoon rains, a dengue fever epidemic, car bombs, a collapsing pedestrian bridge, corrupt construction rackets, traffic Armageddon, indifferent politicians and a filthy athletes’ village that does not even have proper plumbing yet. Or wiring. Or paint on the walls.

The Commonwealth Games are coming to New Delhi, India, in 11 days. Canadian athletes are scheduled to begin arriving in 48 hours. India’s showcase moment is at hand. The entire world is watching.

But what the entire world is seeing — at least so far — looks more like the travails of a First World wannabe nation still struggling with its lingering Third World problems.

* Should Canada Canada pull out of the Commonwealth Games? Tell us what you think

There are fears about safety, security and site preparedness. Canada’s Sports Minister, Gary Lunn, has “serious concerns” about the state of athlete accommodations. “It’s going to take a lot of work to rectify,” he said.

Scott Stevenson, Commonwealth Games Canada’s director of sport, who arrived in Delhi last week, is “deeply concerned.”

“Beyond the major cleanup required, there are other issues with plumbing, wiring, furnishings, Internet access and mobile telephone coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said. And people are angry about it. Canadians are angry about it.

Dr. Andrew Pipe, the president of Commonwealth Games Canada, sounds hopping mad. Wearily furious, in fact, because time is running out and because time and time again he has voiced his concerns to Indian officials and been met with something resembling a roll of the eyes.

“Personally, I am very deeply disappointed with the reactions of the Indian government and the [Delhi] Organizing Committee to this point,” Dr. Pipe said in a conference call on Tuesday.

“They speak of, or they reflect, it seems to me, a certain level of indifference that borders, at times, on the intransigent as they have been glacial in responding to the concerns that have been raised by my colleagues and I for weeks, indeed months, leading up to these Games.”

Well, the good news is, the Indians don’t seem to be too worried. The Games will go on. Even if they don’t go on, which was an extreme outcome the Canadians did not want to entertain, but one being voiced by New Zealand’s advance team after they waded through some athlete accommodations featuring exposed wiring, rubble and piles of human excrement. “If the village isn’t ready, the athletes cannot arrive,” New Zealand’s chef de mission, Dave Currie, said.

Games’ organizers in Delhi answered the international outcry over substandard living conditions with a head-scratching rationale, saying certain standards of “cleanliness” might differ from other standards of “cleanliness.”

Currently battered by criticism from the international bleachers, the Games have long been a flashpoint on India’s domestic political scene. Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, has chided Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for contributing to the Commonwealth instead of the “common health.”

He also taunted him. “Even if the PM starts wiping the floor the venues won’t be ready,” Mr. Modi said recently. Not everyone is panicking.

“I am not worried at all,” India’s Urban Development Minister S. Jaipal Reddy told reporters. “I am as confident and as cool as ever about our organizing of the Commonwealth Games in a very successful, comfortable way. These are all minor hiccups.”

Major international athletic competitions are, on the surface, about the purity of sport. And patriotism. And amid all the fun and games is a political message.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics were a showcase of muscular Nazi architecture and Aryan superiority until, that is, Jesse Owens blew away Hitler’s blue-eyed golden boys.

China’s Summer Olympic turn in 2008 flashed an Asian industrial tiger’s might while soccer’s World Cup cast an incandescent glow over South Africa, revealing a nation packed with human potential too often overlooked or underestimated by the West.

Now along comes India, another would-be beast of the Far East and suddenly everybody is gnawing on their fingernails wondering if they can actually pull this thing off.

Ask around and veteran Canadian athletes with experience competing in the country will whisper about the organizational hijinks that, in their experience, typically attend an Indian-run event.

Ask around some more and you find athletes competing in sports, such as squash — which is not an Olympic event — eyeing the Delhi Games as their sole shot at a gold medal.

“We’ve been looking forward to this for four years,” Canadian squash player Shahier Razik says. “This is the big one for us.”

It is also a big juicy target for the bad guys. Suspected militants gunned down two Taiwanese tourists in Delhi on Sunday. Soon after, the BBC received an ominous-sounding email from a terrorist group.

“We know preparations for the games are at their peak,” the email said. “Beware, we, too, are preparing in full swing for a great surprise.”

A car bomb also exploded in the city. Nobody was hurt. But the message was sent. Dani Samuels, the Australian world champion in discus, has withdrawn from the Games, citing security concerns.

Mike Duffy, an Australian journalist, poured additional gasoline on an already combustible situation by sidling past Delhi police and into the main Commonwealth stadium this week with an oversized suitcase.

Inside was a bomb detonation kit.

“Nobody asks me what it is for,” Mr. Duffy says in a voice-over. “And this is no ordinary piece of luggage.”

And this is no ordinary Commonwealth Games. Canadian officials have received assurances that the security is up to snuff.

Too bad the same can’t be said for the plumbing.

A small portion of a false ceiling at the main Commonwealth Games venue of Jawaharlal Nehru stadium complex here today fell, causing more embarrassment to the organisers and the government a day after

the collapse of an under-construction foot overbridge. Two-three tiles fell this morning from the
ceiling of
the stadium where the weightlifting event is scheduled to be held, police sources said. No one was injured in the incident. The tiles measures 2 ft by 2 ft.


This is the second incident of collapse in the past three days inside the stadium complex.

On Monday, a canopy collapsed in which two police personnel, including an Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, suffered minor injuries.

In another incident which took place yesterday outside the complex, an under-construction foot overbridge collapsed when labourers were engaged in work. 27 labourers were injured.

The Centre, the Delhi government and the CWG Organising Committee are under attack for the pace of preparations for the Games.

When contacted, a senior fire official claimed that they were told by Delhi Disaster Management Authority that a mock drill was taking place at the stadium and there was no incident of tiles falling from the ceiling.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/specials/ ... 03279.aspx

2 Teams Delay Leaving for Troubled Games in India

India's Commonwealth Games woes raise concern about major sports events in developing nations


The idea sounded good: Put international sports festivals like the Commonwealth Games in countries such as India to broaden the stage for international competitions and encourage economic development.


Indian laborers work outside Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, the main venue for the Commonwealth Games,in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010. The Commonwealth Games chief rushed to New Delhi seeking emergency talks with the prime minister over India's chaotic preparations, as two world champion competitors withdrew and England warned that problems with the athletes' village have left the sporting event on a "knife-edge."( (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)
(AP)



It had been done before, with the Olympics in China two years ago and with regional events like the Pan American Games in South America and Cuba in the 1980s and '90s.

This time, it is backfiring. Instead of showing the world that it is a modern, global power, India is being castigated for its lack of preparation.

With barely a week to go before the games begin, frantic last-minute preparations are verging on chaos, international sports officials are furious and the games have become an international embarrassment that could threaten plans for major sporting events in other developing nations.

Scotland and Canada said Wednesday they would delay their departures to New Delhi because of the unfinished athletes' village. Meanwhile, an official with the New Zealand swimming team said international swimming federations could quickly stage an alternative meet if the games were canceled.

The Times of India summed it up with a front-page headline: "C'wealth Games India's Shame."

"Irretrievable damage has been done to the country's reputation," said Norris Pritam, an Indian journalist who has covered many Olympics and Asian Games. "India can still pull it off, but I was more hopeful a few weeks ago."

Commonwealth Games Federation President Mike Fennell headed to New Delhi, seeking emergency talks with the prime minister to discuss the situation, the games' chief executive, Mike Hooper, said Wednesday.

Games organizers have faced a slew of troubles recently, including heavy rains, a citywide outbreak of dengue fever, fears over security after the shooting of two tourists near one of the city's top attractions, and the collapse of a pedestrian bridge at the main stadium, injuring 27 construction workers, five critically.

The athletes' village — a symbolic heart of the games — was still unfinished Wednesday, the eve of its scheduled opening. The home for more than 7,000 athletes and officials from 71 countries and territories has been called "unfit for human habitation."

Andrew Foster, head of Commonwealth Games England, said Wednesday "the next 24 to 48 hours is the critical time" to determine if the standards of the athletes' village can be raised.

So far, four athletes — including three world champions — have said they won't attend because of health or safety concerns.

Indian government officials insisted they would prove the critics wrong.

Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, told the BBC that the games will be "one of the most successful that the Commonwealth has undertaken." He blamed "the prolonged monsoon" for the problems.

New Delhi, chosen over the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario, as host, has had seven years to prepare, though very little was done until 2008. Armies of workers — often rural villagers making just a few dollars a day — have been deployed across the city in recent weeks to get it ready.

Indian officials have long dismissed international worries over the slow preparations, even though they were more than a year behind schedule. At one point, the sports minister joked that the games were like a stereotypical big chaotic Indian wedding — and that after lots of last-minute efforts everything would turn out fine.

But in recent weeks, as the many problems became more apparent, the Indian media have turned increasingly critical, questioning why the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hadn't done more to reign in mismanagement.

Taking the event to India carried inherent risks.

The trend in recent years among major international sports bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, is for what organizers call "universality" — spreading major competitions around the world as much as possible, including to developing nations where such events have rarely been held.

Last year, the IOC awarded the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro, taking the games to South America for the first time. Africa is now the only continent that hasn't had an Olympics. But South Africa's triumphant hosting of this year's World Cup despite widespread concerns has made it a strong contender for the 2020 Olympics.

"It's part of a desire to keep expanding the range of countries that can host these events," senior Canadian IOC member ceeb Pound told The Associated Press. "You know when you do that the risks are much higher. You just hope the sense of national importance for the host country will allow it to focus on what resources are required and get it done. That said, the risks remain."

So what happened in India?

There's no simple answer. Certainly some blame lies with the central government, which only recently began keeping a close watch on preparations. The Indian media is also rife with allegations of widespread corruption.

And some is pure bad luck: New Delhi has had its heaviest monsoons in decades this year.

"There's an awful lot of talent in India," Pound said. "There's no inherent reason why they could not make a national effort to pull it together better than they have — or seem to have."

He also noted that the Commonwealth, unlike the IOC, is at heart a political grouping, so there is pressure to hold some games away from the traditional hosts of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

"You can't have the same old four or five white countries doing these games all the time," he said.

The IOC and FIFA both have committees which carry out regular and rigorous inspections of preparations for the Olympics and World Cup, something which helps avoid the type of chaos engulfing the games in India.

The IOC had to put heavy pressure on Athens ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympics after chronic construction delays and political wrangling put those games at risk.

"We saw what happened in Athens," Pound said. "There's a limit to what you can do if you don't have the national will or there's a domestic conflict between different groups or political parties."

Pound said Kingston, Jamaica, proved when it hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1966 that developing countries can pull it off with the necessary zeal.

The message to India and others, he said, is: "If we're going to do this and occupy a share of the world's stage, we've got to do it properly. If we're not committed to it, we shouldn't do it."

India's troubles have severely dented its hopes of bidding for the 2020 or 2024 Olympics.

"I'm sure it's put that back by at least a decade," Pound said.

The economic impact of staging major global sports events can weigh heavily on host cities and countries.

The Indian government initially pegged the cost of the Commonwealth Games at less than $100 million in 2003, but the figure has skyrocketed, with estimates ranging from $3 billion to more than $10 billion.

Unlike the Olympics or World Cup, the Commonwealth Games do not attract major international sponsors or TV rights fees.

Although China was able to use the Beijing Olympics to highlight how far it has come after decades of isolation, India is falling behind in that quest.

"When you look at China's very monolithic, dictatorial approach, they have a machine where they can make things happen in a very deterministic manner, whereas India is a colorful and chaotic democracy and sometimes things don't quite go as planned," said Gunjan Bagla, founder of Amritt, Inc., a California consulting firm that helps Western companies do business in Asia.

But the games remain deeply important to India's national pride, making it highly unlikely the government will call them off.

"We're absolutely prepared," Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, who is in charge of monitoring the readiness for Singh, told CNN-IBN television Wednesday.

———

Sullivan reported from New Delhi, Wilson from London. Associated Press writers Ravi Nessman and C. Rajshekhar Rao in New Delhi and Chris Lehourites in London contributed to this report.

Hopes Fade for Success of Commonwealth Games in India
By HEATHER TIMMONS

NEW DELHI — Skepticism about India’s preparedness for the Commonwealth Games deepened Tuesday after a partly constructed footbridge collapsed outside the main arena for competition, injuring dozens.

The collapse coincided with angry words from visiting officials who described the accommodations for athletes as uninhabitable. One visitor, the head of the New Zealand delegation, even raised the possibility that the games might be delayed or canceled.

India’s failure to complete the work for the games, which are to begin Oct. 3 and last for two weeks, has become a major embarrassment for the country instead of a showcase for its rising economic might. The unspoken comparison to India’s rival China, which won widespread acclaim from its preparations for the 2008 Summer Olympics, are a further source of humiliation.

Representatives of the dozens of countries participating in the Commonwealth Games, a quadrennial competition among the nations of the former British Empire, started arriving here in recent days to inspect facilities and conduct security checks. The athletes’ village, built for the games, is not ready, they say, and questions linger about security after an attack on tourists in Delhi on Sunday.

On Tuesday afternoon, a bridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main venue, fell apart. The footbridge collapsed into three pieces, taking several workers with it and uprooting one side of the arch that supported it.

A police officer at the scene said that 27 people had been injured, 4 seriously.

“This will not affect the games,” said Raj Kumar Chauhan, a Delhi minister for development, who spoke at the scene. “We can put the bridge up again, or make a new one.”

The accident occurred when workers were trying to pour concrete into a clip at the base of the bridge, he said, and the clip was loosened.

Games officials had lodged formal complaints about the preparations with India’s government even before the accident. “The condition of the residential zone has shocked the majority,” the Commonwealth Games Federation president, Michael Fennel, said in a statement Monday evening. Mr. Fennel said he had sent a letter to India’s union cabinet secretary. The athletes’ village is “seriously compromised,” he said.

“The problems are arising because deadlines for the completion of the village have been consistently pushed out,” Mr. Fennell said.

The village is “uninhabitable,” the Commonwealth Games Federation chief executive, Mike Hooper, told the local television channel CNN-IBN on Tuesday. “There is dust everywhere,” he said. “The flats are dirty and ******. Toilets are unclean.”

Construction of the village, built alongside the Yamuna River on Delhi’s eastern border, is severely behind schedule. Delhi built a series of apartment towers to house about 7,000 athletes and their families, a 2,300-seat cafeteria, and practice areas on land that was originally an empty plain.

Officials from the Ministry of Sports promised last year that the village would be ready in March 2010, but finishing touches were still being done outside buildings during a media tour last week. And the interiors of the buildings are still not completed, some say.

Dave Currie, the head of New Zealand’s Commonwealth Games team, said Tuesday in an interview with Newstalk ZB, a New Zealand radio station, that the condition of the athletes’ village was “pretty grim.”

Showers and toilets in the accommodations the New Zealand team was given are not working, and post-construction cleanup has not been done, he said. “It is certainly disappointing considering the amount of time they have had,” he said.

Athletes are scheduled to start arriving in Delhi on Thursday, but that date may need to be pushed back, Mr. Currie said, which could ultimately result in the competition being canceled. “If the village is not ready, the athletes cannot arrive,” he said.

“There is a real mountain to climb” before the village can be completed, Mr. Currie said. It will be a “real challenge at this point to make it happen,” he said.

Security at the games has also become a major concern after two tourists were shot outside the Jama Masjid, a mosque that is one of Delhi’s major attractions, on Sunday. Neither tourist was fatally injured, and the mosque is far from the venues or the athletes’ village, but the attack prompted new fears about Delhi’s ability to keep athletes and visitors safe during the games.

An e-mail sent to news outlets soon after the attack said the Indian Mujahedeen, a group the Indian government considers a terrorist organization, would single out the games.

“Had it not happened against the almost complete disarray of the Commonwealth Games preparations, it would not have raised much excitement,” said Ajai Sahni, the executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, a group that studies terrorist activity. Athletes are worried that if construction and planning are in disarray, security may be too, he said.

Most venues were supposed to be completed in 2007, but workers were still putting finishing touches on many of them as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/world ... india.html

Salvage India's pride, postpone CWG to 2011

A Delhi-centric Games without regional involvement? At least 30% of tickets for the opening ceremony have been reserved for VIPs and VVIPs. Where is Bharat in this national pride? The format of the opening ceremony still not finalized? The signature tune has just been unveiled, but the Rs 70 crore floating aerostat is not certain and the central stage is yet to be built.

The Chinese were practicing the Olympics opening ceremony two years ahead. Nothing done to forestall the cyclical outbreak of dengue? It will peak in October. The Village on the Yamuna's floodplains will be vulnerable. Several participating countries have issued alerts. Outsourcing crucial aspects of the Games to foreigners at the expense of local talent including highly dubious sponsorship, baton relay deals?

Perhaps to keep crony kickbacks outside the purview of Indian taxmen? India Inc and MNCs shying from sponsorships; PSUs rethinking commitments? The failure to stem bad public manners — spitting, littering and urinating?

Beijing's Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee successfully instilled civic sense in the city's inhabitants ahead of the 2008 Olympics. This is the state of affairs. Imagine where our much vaunted national pride would be if: once again, India wins only a handful of medals?

Potential home advantage does not exist because self-serving sports administrators have rarely nurtured India's sporting talent and infrastructure. In contrast, the Chinese withdrew from international competitions for more than a decade to develop home-grown sporting prowess, then modestly tested its mettle from the 1988 Seoul Olympics on. star (white) athletes continue to heed, lemming-like, the call of iconic Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser to pull out because of "lies" regarding the quality of venues and the possibility of another Munich?

A "world-class" venue structure collapses? Laggardly security arrangements allow a terrorist strike and inadequate quality control of catering forces embassies to import food for their athletes?

Empty grandstands flash up on worldwide TV? So far, just 20,000 of the overseas allocation of 1.7 lakh tickets have sold so far. And Delhi's residents display no visible interest in the event.

The 'worst ever' Games are in the offing. Matching Australia or South Africa is a pipe dream. Given the organizational disaster, a vortex of mishaps and glitches is inevitable. They will receive worldwide coverage. The objective of showcasing an emerging Asian power on the world stage is set to self-destruct.

Of late, the surreal optimism about hosting the "best ever" Games has given way to doing "our best". At last, there is implicit acknowledgement that an ignominious fortnight is on the cards. It is time to cut our losses.

The bottom line is that a systemic, nationwide malaise has been exposed. It could be a catalyst for declaring independence from incompetence, corruption and the arrogance embedded in DNA of the ruling class. Postponing the Games will give unambiguous notice to the tainted to Quit India.

It would be a non-violent Dandi moment for the aam admi. It would be a fitting homage to Gandhi's birth anniversary is October 2. And in the spirit of his values, Delhi's citizens could be forgiven for hoisting the national flag and writing to their elected representatives to declare: "We will not take it any more."