Many mega sporting events have been controversy magnets. Right from the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games being used by Hitler as propaganda for his ideologies, to the 1972 and 1996 Olympics seeing terrorism rear its head, the world’s biggest sporting stage has been exploited by many.

Sports historian Boria Majumdar, who has recently written a book on the Commonwealth Games fiasco The Sellotape Legacy, says every mega sporting event worth its salt has drawn controversies. “Mega sporting events are sites where you can immediately capture the entire world’s attention,” he says, adding, “So you had the ’36 Olympics which Hitler completely politicised as a show of German supremacy, to the ’64 Tokyo Olympics which Japan used to show it’s back on its feet after the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings. Black Americans Tommy Smith and John Carlos used the podium at Mexico ’68 to protest against racial discrimination when they gave the black salute, while Munich ’72 was used by Black September to stage their protest against Israel, when they killed 11 athletes.”

ECONOMIC PRESSURES
The Fifa World Cup earlier this year too was on shaky grounds prior to the kick-off, with incomplete stadia, security and AIDS threats looming large. Athens hosted the 2004 Olympics, but in the process borrowed so heavily that its entire economy crashed last year. Athens ’04 suffered from many of the problems that New Delhi’s CWG campaign is going through. The stadia and the games village in Athens wasn’t complete till the last minute, and many participating countries had problems with the transportation and planning, leading to chaos all around.
Economist Siddhartha Sanyal believes the 2004 Olympics was one of the contributing factors for the Greek economy to crumble. “The Greek economy isn’t a conducive one for high growth rates. From the population demographics to the nature of the industry there, with government control very much a reality, the Greeks were anyway likely victims of economic collapse. The fact that they borrowed so heavily to host the games only increased its likelihood,” he explains.
He rules out the possibility that the Indian economy will suffer a similar fate, saying our growth rates and market condition will ensure the same doesn’t happen.

SOCIAL ISSUES
Sydney Olympics 2000 went off without a hitch. In fact, International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch called it the “Best Olympic Games ever held”.
However, beneath the pomp and show, say theorists and historians, lies a grim reality — one of massive human rights violations and a homelessness crisis. Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Australian researcher and author of several books on the subject, including Inside the Olympic Industry and Sydney 2000: The Best Olympics Ever?, says the homelessness crises were appalling and made worse by the manner in which large pockets of the poor were evicted for beautification drives. “The Olympic Games industry has always been cruel on the homeless and the poor, often displacing entire populations. For Sydney 2000, nearly two million people were displaced. Atalanta’s harassment of homeless black people, criminalisation of poverty was one of the worst cases of evictions before the ’96 Olympics held there. What is worse is the selective harassment that many other cities have also done. For instance, London has already started evicting marginalised sections from the East End,” she says.
These are certainly issues that Indians can empathise with, as both Indian and international media has reported how the state erected barriers to “hide” shanties and slums of the capital.

HISTORY
MATTERS
Many in India feel confused about why we struggled to host the CWG when we have played host to two Asian Games, two hockey World Cups, two cricket World Cups (a third one is on its way next year), all events which drew equal media scrutiny, if not more. If anything, the Asian Games are considered far more prestigious than the CWG.
K. Arumugam, Delhi-based sports historian, says the main difference between a World Cup and a multi-discipline event like the Asian Games or the CWG is that “the host nation doesn’t create athletes’ village when they organise a World Cup. They only recommend hotels. The concept of a games village was started to foster the famed Olympic spirit,” he explains. Most problems the CWG faced this year had to do with the unhygienic and filthy living conditions in the games village.
As for the two Asian Games, Arumugam says the 1982 edition was a massive success mainly because the government took it up as a prestige issue. “The Congress government lost the elections in 1975 after winning the bid. The Janata party didn’t do much to develop the village or the stadia in the three years they were in power. So when the Congress returned in ’78, they took it up as a prestige issue to finish everything in four years,” Arumugam says, adding, “Prime Minister Indira Gandhi got personally involved, while Rajiv Gandhi and Buta Singh would oversee the work. With such heavyweight backing, the ’82 Asiad was a massive success.”
But the 1951 Asian Games was a different story. In fact, they were supposed to be held in 1950, but needed to be postponed by a year. Majumdar says, “The central problem was an economic shortfall of funds. As a newly independent country, India didn’t have the means to host an event of such a large scale. Nehru was left with no option but to postpone it by one year. Interestingly, a sum of `1 lakh came from the Cricket Club of India, while the army came forward with accommodation facilities,” Majumdar said.

MEDIA’S ROLE
In the past, the only media was the print sector, and that too a sympathetic one, unlike the modern day electronic and print that keep a sharp eye on all that goes awry.
However Majumdar denies that the media is blowing issues out of proportion. “Problems like the Tibetan crisis, apartheid, the cold war and India’s inability to handle smoothly an event like the CWG are issues of global significance, even outside the ambit of the games. It’s the media’s job to report them.”