Let the games begin!

The Commonwealth games are over - and despite all the concern in the lead up to the games, they appear to have gone off fairly well. After all, the headline "India comes second in medals tally" is a much better outcome than what many might have expected, such as "Stadium floodlights collapse killing athletes lined up for 100m final". Of course, you did have the odd case of Delhi Belly but that was perhaps to be expected - I'm sure the athletes from Jamaica and Fiji were fine with the food and water.

The loser in all of this has to be Suresh Kalmadi. Or should it be Sureshhhhhhhhh? If there was one thing he should have done from the start, it would have been to talk less and do more. But then, that is the trademark of every Indian politician, starting with Rajiv Gandhi's famous "Humne dekha, hum dekh rahe hain, hum dekhenge" - the idea that words can somehow magically correct a situation without any hope of recovery. Perhaps they were imitating Churchill who promised to give "blood, sweat, toil and tears" - except that had he not delivered on those words, the capital of the UK would likely be Londonburg or Londdorf. Instead, Kalmadi not only continued to say that everything was ok, he even had the temerity to suggest that the next host city, Glasgow, would not be able to host the games on the scale of Delhi. I guess if he means that they would not be able to marshal 1 lakh workers to clean up everything in a matter of days, then he's probably right. They would probably have everything ready 6 months ahead of time.

But, then again, the "just in time" philosophy, that the Japanese have utilized with much success in manufacturing, has found its true home in India, where there appears to be this rush of excitement for doing everything in a hurry. Promises and commitments are made, and when they are found to be slipping, the default solution is to utilize the mammoth workforce within the country. The famous quote by Nehru that India's population would be its strength, as opposed to its weakness, is never more alive today, now that we have more than four times the population we did at Independence. With the ability to bring so many people together to get a job done, there is almost no value to be gained from executing a task to a plan -after all, if that were done, we would soon realize that you don't need so many people in the first place! As a socialist country, dedicated to providing work opportunities to every single able bodied man and woman (and child), the idea of not needing to use labor would be unthinkable!

The slipshod approach to development contrasts starkly with that seen in China, although there is evidence that our friends to the north of the border can occasionally get it wrong as well (see for example an email chain going around with pictures of a 13 storey building lying on its end because the foundation was barely a few feet deep!) At least in China, the penalty for getting something wrong is severe - you don't see to many builders or architects getting a second chance. In India, it would almost be expected that a major project ends up with several glitches that need to be patched up for years to come.

So now that we are past CWG XIX, let the real games begin - the blame game! That's one where Indians come out far and ahead the winners!