Is Our Nation’s Pride For Sale..??

By watching news regularly from the past one month on my television screen, reading the national newspapers and discussing this topic on facebook, the only question which comes to my mind “is our nation’s pride for sale??”

Barely 45 days are left with our country to organize one of the world’s most prestigious games in Delhi. ie; “COMMON WEALTH GAMES” (CWG). And now “Brand India” is attached with these games. Organizing games at such biggish level will surely represent India to the world and its success may attract many global organizations to invest in our country. This can be understand more clearly with the past.. taking into account that how the “Beijing Olympics 2008” had helped China in increasing its GDP, it became the member of WTO and their was a flood of foreign investments, which is a record in itself. And we are very much aware that today China has left India behind in the race of superpower ( explained in my previous blog). The same was the case with Australia after the success of Sydney Olympics.

Now we all are very much clear that how much important is the success of the games for the development of our country. But the billion dollar question is :- Does the kind of preparations which our government is doing are sufficient ? Its very uncollectible to say that CWG is becoming a serious victim of corruption in the country. Corruption, which is one of the major hindrance in the development of the country is also destroying this Golden Opportunity.

The Central Vigilance Commission (cvc) has unearthed my document by which the multidimensional loot that is taking place has come into focus. Jawaharlal Nehru stadium had to be upgraded for the games at estimated cost of Rs. 580 crore. This renovation cost went upto Rs. 961 crore, which is almost double the estimated cost. The common wealth village if far from satisfaction. No one is allowed to take the camera view . each and every stadium tells the same story. Under the pressure of the politicians, now CVC has also put the official seal of disapproval regarding the loot in the games.

There is one another group of people who feels strongly that in the country where half the people live below the poverty line, the games are simply the unwanted luxury. Why it was necessary to spend 30,000 crores on the games? Why the estimated cost has jumped up to 17 times in the past 7 years? For tha inugral ceremony Rs 100 crore were kept aside which has now gone up to Rs. 375 crore.we will have the balloon touching Delhi’s sky which cost 80 crores. The gas will have to be imported from that balloon. Can we afford such luxury?

In my opinion, CWG has become a shameful blame game. Organizers have forgot what the were organizing. We seem to have lost the plot completely. I’ll not be shocked if their will be questions raised about our capability to host big international events. Who will pay for the loss? Organizers, who are right now busy in filling their pockets and at the time of enquiry, they will just pack up their bags. But the nation will have to find the answers to these uncomfortable questions. It will be BRAND INDIA which is going to suffer, not those organizers who flouted the rule book.

That’s why organizers must wake up now. We still left with one month to rectify the mistakes. After all if you are playing with our country prestige, then we are not going to leave you.