At his now-famous interaction with a quintet of editors this past week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a few somewhat strange remarks about the Commonwealth Games of 2010 and the serial scandals that preceded it. In essence, he had two contentious points.

First, Dr Singh alleged Mani Shankar Aiyar, as Union sports minister, had written to him “on purely ideological grounds… (and) was opposed to spending that much money on hosting” the Games. Mr Aiyar had not made any specific allegations against the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee or its chief, Suresh Kalmadi. “He (Mr Aiyar) did not bring to me anything wrong that was being done”, Dr Singh said.
Second, Dr Singh suggested his hands were tied by the institutional autonomy Mr Kalmadi enjoyed. For this he blamed the National Democratic Alliance government, which was in office till 2004: “Kalmadi was there because he was the president of the Indian Olympic Association. The agreement to host the CWG was signed in the year 2003 when the previous government was in power”.
All the quotes above have been taken from the transcript released by the Prime Minister’s Office and placed on its website. Do they represent the truth and nothing but the truth, or do they reflect only a selective truth?
To understand that one has to go back to the organisational structure of the Commonwealth Games. Under the rules of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), national bodies such as the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) need to be free of government interference. These are civil society institutions and cannot be run by government ministers and bureaucrats by fiat.
To maintain the integrity of the IOA is, however, different from putting together a framework to deliver a successful Commonwealth Games. This is not unique to India. In London, preparation for and execution of the 2012 Olympic Games is the mandate of the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG). The British Olympic Association (BOA) is a stakeholder in LOCOG. Its chairperson and chief executive are members of the LOCOG board. Even so the two, LOCOG and BOA, are institutionally distinct.
In 2003, the Government of India did make some commitments to the CGF. It agreed to provide sovereign guarantees and underwrite the Games in diplomatic and financial terms, should the Organising Committee (OC) so require. This again is not unusual. A big sports event of this nature has to have a substantial host government buy-in. For instance, only a national government can grant visas and provide security cover.
Take another example. Given New Delhi’s traffic, the agreement with the CGF agreed to set aside one lane on the city’s roads for travel of athletes and Games officials. Obviously the IOA or the prospective OC could not do this. They had no authority over Delhi police. As such, the government had to make that promise.
So far so good: now where did the OC come in? The OC was meant to ensure the requisite infrastructure was ready for the Games, the equipment was in place, the caterers were working in the kitchens, the signage and stopwatches had been acquired. It was then expected to conduct the Games as an event-management entity.
Of course, it would need to consult the IOA since this was a sporting event. The sports element — as opposed to, say, hiring caterers or buying computers for the media centre — was the expertise of the IOA.
Much of the money for the OC’s budget was coming from the Government of India. Since this was use of public funds, a degree of public oversight of the OC’s functioning was appropriate.
It was originally envisaged that the Prime Minister would be chairperson of the OC and the IOA president would be deputy chairperson. When he came to 7 Race Course Road in 2004, Dr Singh brushed aside this idea. Fair enough, the Prime Minister is a busy man and has better things to do than supervise the Commonwealth Games. Even so, quite astonishingly, Dr Singh did not nominate another minister, public servant or government representative for the job. By default, Mr Kalmadi became OC chairperson.
So consider this, the government was funding the OC but did not bother to place somebody who would monitor its interest at the top of the OC hierarchy. In 1982, the Asian Games Special Organising Committee was headed by Buta Singh, then a Union minister. He was not president of the IOA but did consult the IOA.
It is crucial to understand Mr Kalmadi had every right to autonomy as IOA president. He did not have every right to autonomy as OC chairperson. The IOA is a perennial institution dedicated to promoting the Olympic movement in India. The OC was a project management and delivery vehicle, no more. It was ad hoc and coterminous with the Games.
The OC had a general body comprising over 450 people. Besides this, it had 1,600 employees. These people were paid salaries using grants given by the Government of India. How were they being hired? What were their salaries? The government had a right to know. The Olympic Charter did not prevent the government from asking these questions. Neither did the agreement signed with the CGF in the tenure of the NDA government.
It is understood two Union sports ministers — Mr Aiyar and his successor, M.S. Gill — urged Prime Minister Singh to curtail Mr Kalmadi’s powers and give oversight of the Games project to a wider, cross-cutting body that would straddle governmental, civic and sports-event responsibilities. It is also believed Mr Kalmadi’s friends and co-conspirators in the CGF somehow persuaded Dr Singh that this would be unfair. They are supposed to have put forward the spurious argument that the OC’s autonomy needed to be preserved because it was linked to the IOA’s autonomy.
Some of Mr Aiyar’s letters to the Prime Minister are now in the public domain. Perhaps he and Mr Gill should be called upon to clarify exactly what they told the Prime Minister and when. It is in Dr Singh’s interest to push them in this direction.

The author can be contacted at malikashok@gmail.com