It’s a shame for India and all Indians. As I write this piece today the CGF chief Michael Fennell’s is leading the CGF General Assembly delegates on tour of CWG venues in Delhi and the delegates are visibly and seriously annoyed and disgusted at the preparedness of the games.
The government is so under prepared and is brashly trying to put up a bold face claiming to be able to achieve in next 11 months what they could not in the last 8 years.
Delhi unfortunately remains as un-civic as it can, the infrastructure as fragile as it can and yet... Impetus Research, a leading market research and opinion polling agency in India has started a new series of very short instant polls on issues faced by our country.
The latest one is a poll on preparedness of India for hosting Commonwealth Games 2010. the link to the poll hosted online is this.
Please log in and share your thoughts on the same. The real time results can be seen on completion of the survey.
But does all this public anguish filter down to those who are misusing public funds and still not being able to make it, is a big question.
Its a shame, a big fat shame ! As per the above survey by Impetus Research, the first thing that the government should do is take it up as a national challenge and not a Delhi government headache, bring this event directly under PM’s purview, bring in foriegn experts and let the entire event be managed by some young and influencial person such as Rahul Gandhi, who can use his position and connections to get the preparations moving at breakneck speed. Bodies like IOC and its inefficient people including chairman be removed from managing the event who neither have any experiance nor a will to make this event a success.
What really puzzel’s me is why was nothing done for so long. May be they though that at the last moment money would be pumped in from all directions, in order to save the games, and probably no questions would be asked about how it was spent (squandered off). What really matters is that these deep pocketed politicians would make a moolah, while the nation hangs its head in shame.
However, through this post I would like to appeal to all my fellow citizens and especially those residing in the Delhi and NCR to contribute in making the visitors take back a good impression about our country. Contribute not by money but by our actions.
Let’s take a pledge to keep our city clean, follow traffic rules to the book - by following simple steps like not honk while driving, respect pedestrian’s right to road, observe traffic signals, bring rougue elements to book by reporting them to police if found creating nuisance, giving respect and being helpful to others.
I dont want to preach here, but even if it helps in bringing any change in even 10 people reading this blog, I think I would consider myself successful in my efforts.
Last but not the least, we have to voice our concerns and force the government of India and all those who matter to sit up and get into action.
Some of the people I have been discussing with think that discussing Commonwealth Games is non-sense, especially when there are so many other things which need attention, but I think this is one of the many things which is symbolic and of importance to India.