I tend to be in partial agreement with Mani Shankar Aiyar. The intent of the games needs to be thoroughly examined. Commonwealth is made up of very poor countries. Maybe, it would have been a better idea to have held these events across the entire country so that the benefits of the upgradation of infrastructure could have been spread out. Delhi’s preparations are bordering on the lackadaisical and the absurd.
Incomplete plans and construction delays have put not just the building quality in doubt, but there is also a question mark on projects being finished on time. With the kind of over budgeting taking place, the government has long since given up hope of earning revenues from the games.
At the time the Commonwealth Games were awarded to Delhi, the 2010 Football World Cup was given to Johannesburg. If ever there was a parallel between places, it was between the two cities. Johannesburg lacked infrastructure, faced high crime and was a racist town plan filled with elitist malls. Yet in four years Johannesburg was able to transform itself by creating plantations on wasteland, building new roads and replacing many of Soweto’s tin shacks with new housing.
In India, it is obvious that Commonwealth Games are not intended either to be seen by Indians or to promote a sporting attitude amongst our children.
Nor are they being used as an opportunity to make Indian architecture more visible. Contracts have been given to foreign architects with Indian architects providing merely the administrative support. In any other country, any public expenditure of funds would have to take people into account. There would be an open competition and all the works, along with the costs, would be open for scrutiny. For example, upgradation of the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium was given to a German firm which is being paid Rs 900 crores for this work while the original building had cost Rs 300 crores.
Foreign architectural firms work on between 10 to 12 per cent margins whereas India architectural firms work at 2 per cent margins. The entire city is under siege, leading its residents to ask the larger question about who are the real beneficiaries of all this construction activity.
Following the games, two exercises of significance are going to take place. There will be a financial audit and a design audit. The public need to be told why one design was accepted and another rejected and what were the actual costs of this entire enterprise.
I would like to cite the example of the 2012 Olympics which has been awarded to London and for which 70 per cent of the infrastructure has already been completed. They have used this as an opportunity to create a new vision for the city and entire neighbourhoods have been upgraded to make life more comfortable for its residents. The factor of pride goes a long way in helping to create meaningful architectural work because it should organically evolve from a city’s past. Indians do not think of beauty as anything extending beyond the threshold of their homes which is why all spaces outside their homes have been converted into tortuous space. The Chinese have a very finely developed sense of public aesthetics. When they were, to cite an example, building the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing for the Olympics, they used passive climate control ideas on the use of sunlight. Indian architects would like to know how green are the stadia and other buildings that are being constructed? What other new ideas are being implemented as well? In India, there has been no co-ordination between the different implementing agencies. They do not speak to each other. The result has been gross mismanagement of funds and there are instances of sidewalks being broken down and rebuilt many times over. Of course, today the million dollar question is whether we can meet the deadline, given that there are just two months left. It seems most unlikely.
(as told to Rashme Sehgal)