The second fortnight of September has provided, by strange coincidence, three different platforms to introspect whether India really is a superpower waiting in the wings, the foremost being Commonwealth Games 2010.
Our handling of the Commonwealth Games (CWG), marked by greed, indifference and callousness of those in power, has made this nation’s credibility wilt. A full six years, the back-up of the entire government machinery and a flexible kitty accommodating inflation and cost over-runs were simply not enough for us to host the international event in a way that would impress the sporting youth and reinforce our calibre. At every step we fell into the Western stereotype of the “Third World” — deep, large craters in the middle of busy roads in the capital, snakes in allegedly sterilised rooms of the Games Village, an over-bridge collapsing, leaking roofs and, of course, the infamous toilets. No, this was not a scene out of the television series Fawlty Towers. This was all happening in the national capital, with the media playing its role as the fourth pillar of this vibrant democracy.
Who is Aamir Khan pooh-poohing in the “Incredible India” advertisement? The poor boy is only sullying the road on a bridge because he just could not hold it any longer. The CWG organisers have sullied Mother India because they could not hold on to their greed or just couldn’t care any less. Multi-layered corruption and compromises in the quality of work for the CWG are astonishing, even by our standards. “At one extreme, in India, it would seem we are beginning to take corruption in our stride. We no longer squirm at being ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world. We have come to accept corruption as our national character and hence we do not view it as a serious and alarming social malaise, as is evident from the popular support enjoyed by some of our scamsters in public life”, writes V. Raghunathan in his book The Corruption Conundrum.

AFTER NEARLY 60 years, the hearing on a bunch of petitions related to ownership, issues of worship and praying rights of Hindus and Muslims in Ayodhya came to an end. All documentary, archaeological and historical evidence had been submitted and scrutinised and the Allahabad high court was ready to deliver its verdict. Speculation was rife on whether the country can hear the judgment with equanimity. Central and state governments responded differently — one appealed for calm and peace through advertisements while another accumulated paramilitary and police forces to prevent trouble. The intent here is not to doubt the bonafides of their actions. But a petition in the same court asking for the verdict to be deferred, under the guise of attempting an alternate route for dispute resolution, betrayed a certain degree of hypocrisy and insincerity. Let us hail the Supreme Court for clearing the way for the high court to deliver its verdict.
Fear of disturbance is for the governments to tackle. The judiciary cannot be made a prisoner of the consequences of its decisions; in this case of a verdict it was ready to deliver. After all, even after 60 years, the verdict now expected is not really the final word. The option of an appeal in the Supreme Court is still available to any aggrieved party. As a vibrant democracy and as a superpower in the making, we will be put to test this week again.

IN THE year 2000, the United Nations discussed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and a year later 192 member states and 23 international organisations agreed to achieve these goals by 2015. With only five years to go, a review conference was held in New York on September 20-22, 2010. There are eight MDGs for India (and for other countries as well) to achieve, through 21 quantifiable targets. These include eradicating extreme poverty, promoting gender equality and empowering women, improving maternal health and combating HIV, malaria and other diseases.
Based on the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty, the “UNDP India estimates, using the trend of reduction in poverty of 1.9 per cent, which is the rate of reduction between 1990 and 2005, for the years 2005-2015 indicate that population in extreme poverty is likely to decline to 34.31 per cent by 2015, which is higher than the target rate of 25.65 per cent in 2015. This means that India will not be on track to meet the MDG goal on poverty reduction” (K. Seeta Prabhu, UNDP, India).
One of the targets specified to be achieved for meeting the goal of empowering women is to increase the “proportion of seats held by women in the national Parliament”. Since 1991, the number of women parliamentarians has declined from 9.7 per cent to 9.1 per cent of the total strength of Parliament. However, in the present House, after the 2009 election, their numbers have gone up slightly, taking their strength to 10.3 per cent.
The MDG relating to the maternal mortality rate (MMR) expects us to reduce MMR to 109 per 100,000 live births by 2015. The government, in its 2009 Mid-Term Statistical Appraisal, admitted, “At the historical pace of decrease, India tends to reach MMR of 135 per 100,000 live births by 2015, falling short by 26 points”.
Malaria and tuberculosis account for the highest number of deaths in India. About 30 per cent of the world’s TB patients are in India — the disease kills two persons every three minutes, that’s nearly one thousand Indians every day.
While each of the eight MDGs is important, only a few have been flagged here as these relate to some very fundamental and elementary rights of citizens. Today, as MDGs are target-based, governments over-enthusiastically pour money into schemes to show their political will and commitment. But many of these schemes bypass the existing infrastructure, hitting at the very root of the welfare state, and most funds go unaudited. Our primary health indicators are shaming us. Is the road to achieving MDG targets going the CWG way?
Can we confront corruption and greed? Can we only appease but not face issues of faith? Will we allow our institutions to dry and decay because we want their resources? September seems a suitable month to make sense.

Nirmala Sitharaman is spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The views expressed in this column are her own.