COMMON WEALTH GAMES- A LEARNING EXPERIENCE

We have been listening about the delays in our preparedness for the common wealth games since last year, but we never imagined even in our wildest of dream that up until the last day we would still be staring towards the skies, hoping for a miracle to happen or wishing if the morning newspaper doesn’t have a headline writing CWG with kalmady’s face on it.

It’s just not the matter of timely preparedness of our stadiums and infrastructure or the hygiene standards of games village. Its about image, it’s about what message we are giving to the world at large. This is the time when the whole country is under the spotlight, this is the time when the execution of our promises made to the world has to be done, but, what exactly are we doing?

The statement of our sports minister M.s. Gill “ the preparation of these games are like the wedding of an Indian daughter, it all looks messy in the beginning but as the date approaches every one gears up and ultimately everything goes well” does give an insight of the typical Indian mindset or the Indian government’s mindset at least.

In the fast changing dynamic and interconnected world where precision is the norm and time is considered to be the most precious asset, the whole rigmarole of this episode does make a mockery of these universally accepted global norms. Not able to put up a better show is one thing but not able to put up a better show despite having all it takes at your disposable and spending at least 5 times more of what an average game of this magnitude would have cost, there were never any room for excuses.

I am still very sure that the games will go well, that India will bag the second highest if not the highest gold medals and the same leaders who are hiding their faces from public now, will again resurface with newfound zeal and make a song about how they are responsible for all these great achievements and soon this ugly episode of delay will be brushed under the carpet of time, because public memory is too short and they want to live in the make believe world.

But that would be a real backward step, it’s not about creating an inquiry commission, it’s actually about the masses to wake up and take notice of how people play with sentiments and public money with equal ease. We should take this episode as a learning curb and vow to improve our and our leader’s standards as well.

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