CWG - What next??

Woke up today to yet another disgrace in CWG's chapter.. If I hadn't known better I would have sworn that somebody has deliberately jinxed the games from the beginning ... the foot bridge that was supposed to link one of the car parks to the stadium collapsed or rather as one person put it "..2 clips just gave away.. it was nothing serious.." As we know, this is just the latest of a series of issues marring the CWG ...

The other one making the rounds in the News today...  As many as 4 countries have come back with complaints on the unhygeinic conditions of the CWG village ... stray dogs, construction workers defecating openly and in the apartments, cleaning work still going on in certain towers meant for the athletes, exposed electrical wires and the major highlight - construction work still going on when the cut-off date for completion is Sep 23rd 10..( for god's sake that is tomorrow !!)...

Doesn't all this sound so familiar?? Go and see any construction site ... the entire site is littered with stray dogs and the unpainted and just cemented apartment walls are standing testimonials to the poets scattered around the area... I have seen this first hand in our apartment which is under construction now... I later deciphered that it is Bengali that has been scrawled in my walls!! And do not ask about the condition of the floors.. as one guy said  "I do not want to pull any punches... It is filthy!! "

As if all this was not enough.. Channel 7, an Australian channel picks up a great time to do a sting operation to check security operations in the CWG ... Michael Duffy - a Channel 7 correspondent enters a CWG stadium with a suitcase packed with explosives and nobody bothers to check what is inside ... This guy even shows how he went around getting the explosives in Delhi's black market... No wonder players are dropping out left right and centre.. If the dengue doesn't kill you..then the rising flood waters might ...or if you escape that, any crack-pot's explosive device will do you in... And promptly Mr. GK Pillai - Home secretary  and Mr. Rajan Bhagat - Spokesperson, Delhi Police pin down the sting operation as a bogus story... Guys.. please grow up and take responsibility for your mistakes... stop hedging and putting the blame on someone else... !!

When asked about the CWG village conditions, Maj. Dalbir Singh - Mayor of the games village, coolly answers 80% of cleaning work is done and only 20% not done... and the rest are isolated incidents ... one or two window-panes may be broken... !!! No mention of how the apartments became filthy in the first place !! Another organizing committee member says openly "Their (other athletes) standard of cleanliness may be different and mine might be different"... And Mr. Jaipal Reddy - Minister of Urban development takes the prize for the crowning statement on the foot bridge collapsing "I do not know why it happened ...But this is not a major incident..." What if this same bridge had collapsed under a whole set of foreign delegates/atheletes after just 10 days when the games open? Will it be a major incident then? Probably the 20 odd labourers getting hurt does not come under a major incident category!! In a nation of 1 billion people probably 20 people getting hurt does not matter ?!!

How can anybody talk so calmly in the face of such shame and disgrace for the country is beyond me.... The whole world is watching us ... Despite being looked upon by many in the world for its great colourful culture (I guess this is what we will talk about as our best asset even in 2050 !!), the growing technical/intellectual population, India has shown itself inept in handling such kind of mega projects ...leave alone mega projects... even the so called small ones are riddled with problems -  delays, cost over-runs ..And when the project does get completed after a series of hiccups, one finds out that it is not according to the requirements ...the user simply rejects it...time... and because time is money.. it is money gone down the drain....  

Why does this happen ?  It is a collective "chalta hai" attitude that has grown inside us... a basic disrespect for discipline, anything to do with proper process, structure and hard-work.... a consistently complacent attitude towards corruption, security, hygeine .. "This is India .. yaar... thats how it is..", people claim.. this out of the mouths of the so-called urban educated...  People who are happy to adhere to strict security, cleanliness rules or laws when they are outside India,don't bother with the same here ... How many of you have subjected yourself with patience for any security clearance in your office? How many times have you littered the road-side with left-over food, plastic covers, spitted/pissed on the roads when you thought nobody was looking? How many times have you closed a running tap or switched off lights after use in a public place? This is basic discipline that could go a long way in making India a better place...

Why does it have to be this way? Why do we keep talking, blogging and debating in news channels .. but do nothing for finding a solution...I read somewhere .. Indians are great planners .. give them a topic and they will debate it to death... but when it comes to finding a good solution and implementing that solution to get a tangible result... zilch!! After October 3rd.. if the CWG is still on... and India somehow manages to pull it off.. then all this will be forgotten... But what are the lessons learnt? Is somebody jotting down and trying to think of ways this could be avoided in future? 

Is this the India you want our children to be proud of?

India has become a colossal mass of faceless people moving in a direction they know not, still with a defiant pre-colonial attitude (whatever happens..Mera Bharat Mahaan!! ) at a speed that wouldn't do justice to a snail..and to a destination where only despair awaits us. Our cities are becoming dirter and burgeoning haphazardly at an ever increasing pace, with poor infrastructure and increasing pollution, filled with vagrants from villages with no employment...ultimately moving towards disaster!! Most of the state owned departments which hold important portfolios for the nation development, are filled with incompetent people riding on the only thing going for them .. their caste... why wouldn't bridges fail??

Is there any agenda at all in the near future to better all this? How are we going to do this mammoth task that awaits us? Who is the leader who will take us out of these miseries and give us back our honour and dignity?

We need to start accepting our failures.. list down the issues..the priorities... fast ... learn what the west and east have managed to do..atleast in the areas which does matter now (infrastructure,cleanliness,hygiene,security..to list a few) ... change this "chalta hai" attitude and start building accountability into everything we do ...and Build leaders while we are at it !! Not an easy job, especially when it has been neglected for so long a time ... But we need to start somewhere....

There are serious lessons to be learnt & to be put down to action even if we are probably late by some 50 years ...We need to learn to maintain dignity and discipline in the face of such disgrace... and metamorphose into a more respectable nation...if not a super power!! Then we can probably say "Mera Bharat Mahaan", without feeling like a fraud!!

Signing off

Sundari