The reasons behind India’s Commonwealth Games shambles

Just as China did with the Olympics two years ago, this was supposed to be India’s turn to announce its arrival as a great power.

But instead its preparations for the Commonwealth Games due to begin in India’s capital Delhi this week have only reinforced its reputation of being disorganised and corrupt.

The substandard quality of the infrastructure, venues and the athletes’ village has brought shame on the country rather than pride.

The Games

The Commonwealth Games are the third-largest games behind the Olympics and Asian Games.

They are held every four years and are the flagship event for Britain’s Commonwealth, the group of countries that were once colonies of the British Empire.

8,000 athletes from 71 countries will be competing in 260 events and 17 disciplines, and it will be the most expensive games yet with an initial budget of US$2 billion.

However, despite Indian officials repeatedly saying “they will be the best games yet”, the images and stories revealed last week suggest otherwise.

The shambles

The main problem is the state of the accommodation in the athletes’ village.

Team representatives from Scotland and New Zealand inspected some of the rooms and described them as filthy, unhygienic and “unfit for human habitation.”

Their long list of complaints included dirty walls, flooding, loose wiring, broken toilets and air-conditioning units, no phone or internet connections, building debris on the floor, faeces in the showers and even stray dogs sleeping on the beds.

Indian media reported last week that only 18 of the 34 accommodation towers are finished, despite athletes planning to move in tomorrow. At least three athletes have now pulled out citing the poor hygiene.

Concern has also been raised about the building quality of the venues and infrastructure. In August, rainwater poured through the roof and walls of a pool complex, where weeks earlier a swimmer was injured by a faulty grill.

Last week, a footbridge collapsed near the main stadium injuring 23 labourers, and a day later part of the ceiling at the weightlifting venue fell in.

And to add insult to injury for Indians, reports suggest the $2 billion budget has blown out to around $8 billion.

One Indian minister responded to last week’s revelations by saying they were “all minor hiccups” and that they “will have a very successful games.”

But now as merely avoiding cancellation will be considered a success, many are wondering how it all got to this.

The reasons

In August, Delhi experienced their worst monsoon rains in three decades, and also suffered from an outbreak of dengue fever (a disease similar to malaria) with a breeding ground for the disease-carrying mosquitoes forming near the athletes’ village.

These two factors certainly made completing the final preparations more difficult, but construction was already a year behind.

The real reasons for the poor and delayed state of the facilities are incompetent politicians and corruption.

The chairmen of the 23 separate committees that oversaw the games’ organisation barely met, and big decisions were made extremely slowly by a small number of officials who lacked specialist understanding.

Delhi was awarded the games in 2003 but construction didn’t begin until 2008.

But it’s the corruption – leading some to call it “the corruption games” – that is at the heart of the problems.

In August, three games officials were suspended over financial irregularities, and the treasurer of the organising committee quit after being accused of corruption.

An anti-corruption body revealed that bribes were paid to officials to award construction contracts and to approve fake building certificates.

It has been discovered that most the venues were built poorly and with second-rate building materials.

Furthermore, overcharging has occurred on just about everything. $88 was reported to have been paid for a single toilet roll. Other revelations include kickbacks, shadowy offshore firms and unexplainable payments to fake companies.

Blame has been firmly placed on India’s organising committee, but many are also questioning the role of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) who oversees the preparation.

In September last year the CGF president wrote to the Indian prime minister requesting crisis talks. At that point, 13 venues were badly behind schedule and the organising committee had barely started planning to run the event.

Inspectors were shown the first completed ‘model’ tower at the games village, and told all the remaining towers (which they were refused access to) would be competed to the same standard and specifications.

CGF officials said they couldn’t have done any more to pressure the Indian government and in the end had to rely in Indian assurances that everything would be ok.

One such assurance was that like an unruly Indian wedding, at the last minute everything will fall into place. But after last week’s drama, people aren’t so sure.

By The Casual Truth