The stain is spreading. With just 11 days to go for the start of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, it is no longer possible to judge just how much shame and embarrassment a bunch of inept, inefficient and corrupt administrators will heap on this nation’s head. Commonwealth Games Federation president Mike Fennell’s letter to the Government of India reports that the delegates of at least four participating countries had been escorted to dirty, incomplete flats in the Games Village, and finally the collapse of a vital footbridge at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Tuesday afternoon was a triple whammy that knocked the bottom out of every claim that Suresh Kalmadi and his cohorts have been making these past few months that all will be well when it comes to the rollout of the Games themselves. The third incident in particular raises some troubling questions. If a relatively insignificant structure can collapse — injuring 27 labourers, four of them critically — just how safe are the rest of the structures that have been erected in a tearing hurry after years of inactivity? Virtually every venue has been rebuilt from the ground up and every one of them has missed deadline after deadline — precious time lost each time that could and should have gone into testing their soundness and readiness to host a mega-event of the size and scope of the Commonwealth Games, where about 5,800 athletes are expected to perform and many thousands more are expected as support staff and spectators.
Yet, even after the footbridge went down on Tuesday, there were denials and increasingly hollow assurances that all would be well from all and sundry, from the Union urban development minister to the Delhi chief minister to the chief engineer of Delhi’s public works department and the secretary-general of the Games Organising Committee. It is all terribly clear that between them, the entire lot of people responsible for every aspect of the Games are taking this country for a ride, and are careening headlong towards a precipice. Long back, when it first became evident that there were problems with so many areas related to the event, action should have been taken and those responsible removed or sacked. Nothing was done other than mouthfuls of platitudes to try and reassure an increasingly nervous and frustrated nation — not to mention the completely alienated citizenry of the host city — and it is now starkly evident that inaction at that critical juncture sent out the signal to the inept and corrupt that they could continue on their merry way and indeed walk away into the sunset when all had been said and done. Tuesday’s list of three sorry happenings was thus inevitable and even on the day, the secretary-general of the Games Organising Committee had the gall to defend the filth and dirt in the Games Village as being a matter of perception! It is this casually dismissive attitude that has led to this pass in the first place, and with no one willing to say that the buck stops with him or her, fears about the Games ending up in a mess are real and understandable. In many societies, those guilty of such massive fraud — for this is nothing less — and misuse of public funds would have long ago been severely punished or at least got the boot. We, however, have not only had to lump their doings, but look on in increasingly impotent rage as tales of mayhem and mismanagement continue to sprout and proliferate. Shame on us!