Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s intervention giving the governmental machinery a clear direction to take charge of preparations for October’s Commonwealth Games has not come a day too soon. His strong words on “slippages” as well as direct government action in virtually taking over organising of the Games, through a committee headed by Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar and an Empowered Group of Ministers headed by urban development minister S. Jaipal Reddy, promise to retrieve some of the considerable ground lost. With just 48 days to go for its October 3 opening, the focus has to be on preparations for the biggest-ever multi-discipline sporting event held in this country. It would ill serve us if the 2010 Games were to be a poor advertisement for the nation. Proper preparation is an obvious prerequisite for the successful conduct of an event of such magnitude, and it remains our fervent hope that it is not too late to take the kind of corrective action needed to ensure that the Games are held without any major glitches.
By allowing the CWG organising committee headed by Mr Suresh Kalmadi a free run for far too long, the government is guilty of an act of omission. In not inspecting with a hawk’s eye the venues built on the instructions of various ministries, government officials are guilty of grave acts of commission. Far too much of skullduggery has gone on in the tendering processes, none of which befits the holding of a sporting event that should ideally be free of the politics of governance and the greed of the corporate world.
Calling for “effective supervision of preparation work” now is akin to closing the stable doors after the horses have begun to bolt. However, with the overriding powers given to it, the committee of secretaries headed by the Cabinet Secretary should be able to get into the heart of venue preparation and get finishing work done to make the venues presentable as well as functional. While the committee is expected to get down to the minutest details, the government will still have to lean on the Games organising committee for sports-related management skills. This is one area where it would be unfair to expect the bureaucracy to be proficient. For the Games to fire on all cylinders, both committees have to turn up at the great sporting party to ensure that it goes off without a hitch.
The Prime Minister has also directed that thorough investigations be undertaken to identify the culprits behind the many obvious instances of inflating of project costs. It’s nothing less than villainous that money should be made at the cost of the Indian taxpayer while at the same time denying some of the world’s best sportsmen truly world-class venues to showcase their talent. There has been far too much fudging of records by means of forged or false quality assurance certificates to cover up shoddy construction work at many infrastructure projects for the Games. The decision to allow Mr Kalmadi to remain at the helm of the organising committee is a matter of expediency. While it would be easy to dub it as a blatantly political act, the fact that the Games are so near must also be factored in. It is no one’s wish that he should be condemned to trial by innuendo. But he has not endeared himself to anyone by steadfastly refusing to take responsibility for delays, cost overruns and, most of all, shoddy construction in CWG-related projects. If the Games do not go off like clockwork, the finger will still point mainly towards the committee headed by Mr Kalmadi, which had been tasked many years back to make preparations for the 2010 Delhi Games.