Passionate About India

The saga of shame of the Indian Commonwealth Games continues as more and more shameful skeletons tumble out of the cupboard. And it only makes my heart cringe. More so because I believe that sports is literally one of the key routes to a healthy nation. From child health to adult health – both physical and mental – sports has a great role to play, especially in today’s day and time where children are getting addicted to videogames and to the internet. To me, personally, the Commonwealth Games event – good or bad – was in reality a great opportunity for India to develop the Indian sports scene. Instead, we found it a great opportunity to plunder more and more money. And that’s what forces me to take a look at how the Chinese used the Olympics as a great leap forward and how they have over years made sports a way of life. Compared to the Indian games, the 2008 Beijing Olympics actually spoke volumes about China’s commitment to sports. Not only did China refurbish the entire host city to ...

I really had decided to not write about the Commonwealth Games at all – the reason is clear in the heading and I will elaborate soon enough! However, receiving too many mails and requests asking me write on the games, finally made me change my mind! But I do not plan to write about all the corruption related allegations, as too much has been said by senior journalists in the most hard hitting manner already. Also, for everything in India, we have a scam. How could one ever expect that the government will plan such a huge project without makingmoney? I will end my reference to the scam by sighting one of the many sms messages on CWG that I received a couple of days back. It stated, “What a lovely anagram (word play)... Unscramble ‘Sir, u made lakhs,’ and you get ‘Suresh Kalmadi’... !!!” Leaving the scam behind on that note, let me tell you why I detest the very idea of the Commonwealth Games. Of course, I agree with Manishankar Iyer wholeheartedly when he says that instead of spending s...