The Commonwealth Games evoke little response from most Indians

It isn’t supposed to be like this. With less than two months to go before the start of the Commonwealth Games,

the public mood should be different. Even if Indians cannot be like the Chinese – the whole of China hunkered down to make the Olympics a success – we should at

least be able to recreate the spirit of 1982. That was the year of the Asian Games and all of us tried our best to ensure that the Asiad became an advertisement for India.

 

   But the Commonwealth Games evoke little response from most Indians. Even before the corruption allegations began to dominate the media, the overwhelming sentiment was: I hope they get the infrastructure ready in time and do not embarrass India. Few of us were looking forward to the Games. There were few expressions of nationalist sentiment. There was virtually no excitement. And certainly, none of us felt any ownership of these Games.

 

   Why should this be so?

 

   Well, for one, there’s the problem of the Commonwealth itself. It is an admirable concept but not one which has much resonance with Indians. Consequently, even the Games organised for Commonwealth countries mean very little to us. Do you know where the last Commonwealth Games were held? Do you care?

 

   The truth is that some sporting events grab the imagination. A cricket World Cup makes India crazy. The Olympics, the soccer World Cup and a few other tournaments fascinate us. But other global sporting events – say, the baseball World Series – leave us cold. Sadly, the Commonwealth Games fall into this category.

 

   To be fair, you could have said the same about the Asian Games. Once again, this is a sporting event that means very little to most Indians. (The same questions can be asked: do you know where the last Asian Games were held? Do you remember when? Etc.) And when the Janata government agreed to host the 1982 Asian Games, most Indians really didn’t give a damn.

 

   But by 1982, a few months before the Games were due to begin, all of India was gripped by Asiad fever. We marvelled at the new stadia. We admired the transformation of Delhi.  And we even found Appu, the Games mascot, a silly-looking baby elephant said to be modelled on childhood pictures of Arun Nehru, extremely cute.

 

   The Asiad spirit is entirely absent today. This is odd because the mood of the times may be regarded as similar. In 1982, we needed to show the world that India was capable of hosting an international sporting event. We openly said that the message of the Games was ‘India can do it’. In 2010, we want to show the world that we are China’s equal. If even South Africa can host the soccer World Cup so successfully, then surely India can do better. The Games could well have been the coming-out party for the new India.

 

   And yet, the mood of 2010 could not have been more different from the mood of 1982.

 

   My theory is that some of this has to do with the way in which we feel about sports organisers. As should be obvious these are bad times for Indian sports associations. Hockey is split into two rival bodies, one headed by K.P.S. Gill and the other headed by Vidya Stokes. Two days ago, the Stokes-headed body elected a man who had once been arrested by the CBI for corruption as its secretary. A media uproar led to his resignation within hours of his election. A short while later, the government of India de-recognised the federation itself.

 

"We don’t see them as a great national enterprise. We see them as a money-making activity run by a group of discredited sleazeballs."

   The scandals in the cricket world are too well-known to bear  repetition. The cricket board tells us that it was all Lalit Modi’s fault but most Indians believe that the rot goes deeper and that cricket management has become a corrupt activity.

 

   Then, there are the allegations of sexual harassment. A hockey coach has been suspended after female players complained that he tried to sleep with them. A weight-lifting coach has faced similar allegations.

 

   All this has made Indians extremely suspicious of the manner in which sporting federations are run. Until now, the general rule was that the less successful India was in a particular sport, the more corrupt the federation appeared to be. Now, the cricket scandal has re-written that rule. Even in sports where we do relatively well, the administrators are crooks.

 

   The unease about sports administrators has something to do with how detached most of us are from the Commonwealth Games. In 1982, the Asian Games were a national enterprise. The government took over the running of the Games from sports administrators. Two experienced government servants – the former R&AW chief, Sankaran Nair, and the former head of the DDA, Jagmohan – handled the logistics while Rajiv Gandhi spear-headed the effort himself.

 

   This time around, the Games have been handled by an organising committee headed by Suresh Kalmadi, who does not have the cleanest image. The sports minister has variously associated himself with and then detached himself from the Games preparation and is, in any case, the sort of person most people regard as a windbag.

 

   In the circumstances, we have seen little evidence that this is a national effort. It is not even an entirely commercial operation. It is not as though the government sub-contracted the event to the Tatas and asked them to make the preparations on a fixed budget. Instead, we have had the worst of both worlds.  The Games are being run by an autonomous body that faces no financial risk whatsoever because it knows that the government will give it as much money as it needs.

 

   That blank cheque given to Kalmadi and his cohorts probably accounts for the cost over-runs and the budget escalations. It explains why treadmills are being hired at exorbitant costs and why massive commissions are being paid to dubious companies in return for doing very little. What the government has done is to empower a bunch of sleazy sports administrators to spend tax-payers money as they chose in the hope that they may be able to organise a Games that we can be proud of.

 

   It is a false hope. And it is a crazy way to organise a tournament. If the experience of the last few decades has taught us anything, it is that India has the worst sports administrators in the world. These are the guys who make their living exploiting India’s sportspeople financially (and sexually) while caring little for actual performance. So, while Indian sport sinks to new lows, and our medals tallies keep shrinking, the administrators flourish.

 

   That, finally, is the reason why none of us have any ownership of the Commonwealth Games. We don’t see them as a great national enterprise. We see them as a money-making activity run by a group of discredited sleazeballs. That’s why none of us is really surprised by the corruption allegations. When you put bank robbers in charge of the bank, how astonished can you be when they rob the bank blind?