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We lost our chance to say, ‘Buddies, we are Indians of a new India!’ to the world.
THE LARGEST multi-sport event conducted in India so far, the 2010 Commonwealth Games being held satisfactorily now for 71 nations has showed that ‘Indians will be Indians’ and nothing can change us.
 After winning the bid in the year 2003 over Canada which has four times organizing experience, it was the first time any developing bigger economy got the opportunity to showcase its technology, infrastructure, skill and so called ’Indian Mind’ to the world. Though, we have an experience of organizing Asian and Afro-Asian Games successfully. However, how can we go against our age old Indian tradition, we started the preparation on the eleventh hour after some pressure from Common Wealth Games Federation in 2008.
Our so called ‘savior of society’, the media noticed the slow progress not before July 2010 when Maoists were taking a power nap, there was no bomb blast and for their surprise even our Indian Trains were not colliding. Our forefathers had understood our nerve to give us an adage ‘Subah ka bhula agar sham ko ghar aa jata hai to use bhula nahi kahte’ (If lost in the morning returns home in the evening, he is not lost actually).
The whole world turned their eyes on the Indian media after exposing a large scale corruption and unpreparedness, calling the venues as ‘filthy and unlivable’. This time, they must have done excellently in TRP. There was a rat race for sting operations; even an Australian TV reporter from Seven Network could not resist his temptation to show the security breaches to the world. It was the first time when Indian Media were ‘eye opener’ for the whole world. The Australian reported: C'wealth Games India's Shame’ headlined the Times of India, the national Hindi-language newspaper Navbharat Times headlined “Double trouble for the Games”.
 I also learnt that the budget estimation was 1620 Cr (2003) which escalated to 11,490 Cr in 2010 (excluding non-sports development). Supreme Court has to intervene into out of interest area as the actual expenditure is expected to be a whopping 70,000 Cr (US$ 15.45 billion), 43 times more than the original estimation and 14 times more than 2006 Melbourne CWG 2006 expenditure (US$ 1144.4 million). The media’s allegations on the Organizing Committee must be true and Central Vigilance Committee (CVC) has found a large scale discrepancy in handling the money and resources. Equipments were bought and contracts were awarded at much higher prices with poor quality and management assurance, etc. However, it can be expected out of some Indian Minds as nothing happens here without the C-word.
"These rooms are clean to both you and us; foreign standards of hygiene differ from our perception." a second front officer of Organizing Committee was true to his heart. We consider ourselves 2-tier and accept the superiority of others over us. A temporary ‘beautification’ is resulted in 160,000 displaced people as CNN reports and bamboo screens have been erected around the slums hide from 1-tier visitors as The Daily Telegraph (London) reports. When ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ depicted our poverty to the world, there was also so much of home grown criticism. Should we follow the Ostrich’s way to solve a problem?
All these resulted in a tug-of-war in the Indian parliament, some resignations, some hot prime time bulletins and non-participation of some eminent athletes in this version of CWG. We lost our chance to say, ‘Buddies, we are Indians of a new India!’ to the world. When China and South Africa had established precedents of standard and success recently, we should have come out of our Indian mindset. I wish everything would go in proper direction to save us at least from humiliation in future.
‘As developing nations we must stand together. We cannot allow developed countries to go out there and take the last seat in the hall’, said the president of South Africa’s Olympic committee who was assertive enough to say that he is willing to clean any toilets to help ensure it goes ahead. Can’ we emulate him? I hope our media will not bother about their TRPs to discuss things to put the responsible into the ambit of law when everything is over. Good Luck ‘CWG 2010’!
During these days when I was a bit busy in adjusting myself for the new atmosphere, there occurred so many incidents that rock the whole country.
THE COMMON MAN has adapted themselves for the unfavorable circumstances due to persistent price rise, but the actual common men are about to be extinct. People are dying of hunger and children suffer nutrition related problems. We spend a lot without a planned and determined approach in agriculture. Our poor farmers work hard to get us more than sufficient to be used as election bait in the elections. Our leaders are not ready to distribute the food to the poorest of the poor instead they want it to be rot in the open. It’s really disgraceful that the Supreme Court has to intervene in activities, our representatives are elected for.
 The common men’s problems do not end with this. Unwillingly they have to support some people who are called the unsatisfied, enemies of the state. They fight for the poor (might pretend, I am confused) with the police, with the government officials to get food, shelter, wages, sometimes even jobs. Because of the confusion between the government and the de facto government, the poor people are deprived of their human rights. Lack of proper strategy and contingency planning cost us some innocent lives- people as security personal and youngsters who are unaware of the rightful ways of getting their rights.
While these problems lie basically in central or eastern India, in the north the situation is graver. It was a very tough time for the people of Jammu & Kashmir. Young minds including children and women are protesting against the government, seen as ‘struggle for freedom’ by some of the so called liberals in India and abroad. I am again confused here what the people of Kashmir actually want. The poll results say something whereas their protests and their anger by a significant group of youth on India as I witness in social networking sites depict something else.
On the other hand, China is trying to show its hegemony over the Asian countries. Deliberately they are refuting Indian concerns over so many areas. The staple visa issue, Chinese troupes in PoK, assisting Pakistan in defence against us, all suggests us to envisage properly before trusting them to avoid any humiliating situations like in 1962. They are too conceited to ignore us and our potential. Obviously is not a solution, it always remains uncertain who will it benefit to but, it is certain that it will cost both sides heavily.
Pakistan even in these six decades has not understood their neighbors. Perhaps it is the feeling of humiliation of losing (for the army) and jealousy of our progress (for the extremists) that they always try to find solace in others’ arms but not in India. Even at the time of great calamity of flood, their refusal to accept the Indian aid offered against a significant protest shows our concern for our neighbor. Their quest ends only at New Delhi and they have to understand the situation before it is too late to re-write the history.
Lastly, there were so many hue and cries for our long-neglected environment. I am not sure about concerns of the government in denying some of the projects which might prove crucial for our transition from no-respected developing country to high-respected. It’s may be for taking political advantage of the situation, position and power. But one thing is clear that we are still in developing stage and until our people have some more serious issues like malnutrition, unemployment, poverty, discrimination, etc, environment may not be their concern at all. We have to compromise the environment with the development up to a certain extent as we cannot have the environment norms what the developed countries have.
At the time of political, social, economical turmoil all over the country, our respected self-proclaimed leaders were trying to secure their future. They forgot the legacy of our great leaders who would join politics for serving others rather than themselves. Now when politics is also a place of gigantic money with power, at least it will create some competition in politics and there will be no place for graduate illiterates and social illiterates. If this happens really, that will be the greatest satire to our so called leaders of the masses.
We are proud of being the largest democracy in the world. It is universally accepted fact that democracy is a long-term asset and we are ahead of China at least in this regard. However, sometimes it can have serious implications too which are not in favor of the nation’s long-term goal.
 The judiciary system is the savior and the police system is the guardian of democracy. In the past six decades, their performance has not been satisfactory. We take more than 25 years to decide (even undecided) whether someone can be held accountable for a serious crime or not. Sometimes the nation has to bear the cost of the “rule of law”. The committees formed submit their report after a long time that the accused are they are on their last breathing (sometimes dead) and the victims have forgotten or are trying to forget the trauma of the incident. However, they are not allowed to forget the memory either.
The recent verdict on SPS Rathore and the latest case of police officers harassing two sisters in Chhattarpur (M.P)- are just the tip of the iceberg. Over 70% of the population in India still lives in rural areas and we can think of the number of these kinds of incidents, which remain unreported. History teaches us how our police system could have been important to tackle with the unfavorable situations and the shape of the nation would have been far better than now.
We can manage to be the super power as well as super poor. We have a large number ofbillionaires and on the other hand, more than 40% of the population (a third of global poor) falls below the International Poverty Line. The Income Inequality (Gini Coefficient) of India is increasing. Our performance is very poor in terms of Human Development Index (HDI). Here, we can massacre the people who follow the religion we hate without any much difficulty. Though, we are a Socialist, Democratic and Secular nation, but all these can happen only in India.
 In a democracy, there are so many tools for our rights though their uses are not and cannot be properly defined. Here, we can go on strike even when we have the responsibility of running the nation. Here, even lawyers, doctors, road-railway and airline employees; everyone has the right to go on strike without considering the consequences neither in their favor nor in the country’s. Only in India, a handful of unsatisfied extremists can challenge central and state security agencies. They kill security personnel, they destroy our infrastructure (though primitive), they kill people and above all, they make law for the people in a sovereign country. No better example can be given to show that we are a democratic country.
Our politicians can leave everything on some committees to find out the cause of all incidents, the committees ultimately come with some crap, but repeatedly same type of incidents can occur only in India. Instead of securing the future, they try to take advantage politically out of every situation. Every accountable-minister always blames others for the incident. They declare the compensation amount in such a lordly manner that every paisa of the amount comes from their wealth and the kin of the deceased are eagerly waiting for that. There is serious lack of co-ordination among center and the states and even various departments of the state. However, it is our heritage and we will carry it proudly to the generations.
Even after so many complications, we can be the potential next super power. We have laws to tackle with almost all kind of situations; they are just decorating the nation on papers and we never bother to follow them because we know that there is another way. We need a foolproof system with zero tolerance for the break in laws. Our elected leaders should be given more power with more accountability. Until then, we have to go with someone, who said, “I have to believe that God exists because only God can run India for such a long period.”
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