MORE than Rs 300 billion of brick and mortar and power cables and giant television sets and astroturfs and tracks and fields and shooting ranges… and… and… and….
And what? Gala is the word. When I entered the boxing ring at the Talkatora Sports Complex to attend a press conference some one month ago, I was, honestly, stunned. After the mythological Indraprasth Palace built for the victorious Pandavas (a la Mahabharata) by the Titan called May Danav, this seemed to me the most splendorous piece of work.
Will there be more than steel and concrete left for sportpersons after the Games are done and dusted? Don’t bet on it.
Truly, the usual journalistic scepticism had melted, and for those who have only read the newspapers and watched the television channels spewing venom all the time, but never got to see the venues from the inside, let me be candid: they are wonderful.
Well, wonderful too to look at are the myriad flyovers… in fact my boss rues the fact that every time he sets out from his south Delhi home to the airport, he misses the flight before his own! What with just one unending stretch from after Nehru Place right up to the domestic terminal, he gets the time needed to reach the airport wrong every single time and reaches too early.
All true. Delhi is a world class city in the making. Not everything is ready yet, just to honour Suresh Kalmadi’s allegory of the big fat Indian wedding, perhaps. It is clear that work will go on till much after the pyrotechnics have ended and the dancers have gone home after the Games are over on 14 October. But once the works are completed, Delhi will be truly a high-class city in terms of infrastructure. Give the devil its due!
But what will be there for the sportspersons?
Legacy.
Like all ideas coined in the West which carries sufficient depth of meaning in their cultures, Indians borrow the word and drop out the content. Like CAT, or DINKI, or YUPPY of the past, we are glibly mouthing Legacy in every second or third sentence, but what does it mean?
The costs of the Games have been tremendous, especially for the denizens of Delhi. Environmental cost in terms of water logging, dengue outbreak, dust haze… human costs of labour maltreatment, tax burden in terms of heightened VAT… the costs have been mind boggling.
But given the proximity to Punjab and Punjabis and their robust, rustic ability to laugh off distress, Delhiites too might have laughed off the burden, if one could demonstrate that there would accrue positive and touchable Legacy for the man or woman at the centre of the whole Games: the sportspersons of this country.
Let us say that the outlying infrastructure – airport, roads, flyovers, etc is for the whole of Delhi, and we must not compute their costs into the Games costs. Yet still, merely the Games infrastructure alone cost about Rs 24 billion to refurbish old stadia, and Rs 16 billion to organise the Games by the OC… a neat Rs 40 billion.
The question is whether these will be accessible by the sportspersons of the future.
History, Marx said aptly, repeats itself but always at higher levels. During the Asiad 1982, Delhi saw the first ever massive construction of stadia and hotels (we are not aware, though, if anyone had then claimed it would be the best Asiad ever!).
I was then just six springs past, but as I grew up, I do not recall our players being allowed to practice in any of them. Nor did I see any major exciting sporting event being organised in these stadia. The Talkatora Stadium grew elephant grass after even the political jamborees that it was used for ended. The Shivaji Stadium became the convenient meeting grounds for drug addicts and nearly the mating grounds for lovers sans homes. Indira Gandhi stadium held the glitzy fashion weeks and awards ceremony. And the only time a Bollywood demi-god was refused permission was when the Shahrukh Khan show was stopped from being held in 2005 because of lack of fire safety measures.
And with annually increasing frustration, I saw – like everyone else – the abysmal downslide of Indian sport, whose one rare moment of glory lay less in a field or the tracks but rather in reel life: Chak De! India
It is going that way, the Marxian axiom being followed. Ask the sportsmen and their federation heads.
“Legacy?” The scorn in the voice of Aga Hussain, vice president Rugby India was barely hidden. “Of course not. The Indian sportsmen will be deprived of any legacy. Already we have heard that the rugby stadium will be handed over to cricket, which consumes every ounce of Indian sporting energy.”
The captain of the Indian rugby team, Nasser Hussain, echoes his VP: “It will all go to cricket, you will see,” he told SportzPower.
Velodrome will be locked up
Archery’s VK Malhotra says that he has information that the archery complex has been built to suit cricket games, so that one is gone too. And VN Singh of the Indian cycling federation says that the velodrome will be locked up for good, with the costly playing area left to rot. India does not have a known history of great indoor cycling events.
The Games has a mascot, but will the sportpersons be bequeathed anything tangible?
The indicator to an crying lack of Legacy is that the rifle shooters have not been given their rifles so far for the full bore event, though a massive and spectacular stadium has been built at Kaderpur, near Delhi. Likewise, the cyclists have yet not received their cycles.
The long bore shooters are practicing with rifles borrowed from their foreign counterparts, but that option is not there for the cyclists: two cannot pedal the same cycle, can they? No wonder Cycling Federation of India president SS Dhindsa had said: “Please do not talk of any medals when our government has not even given a single cycle tyre, what to speak of a full cycle!”
Taught to be optimistic, I tell myself, look, sports is fast growing in India and the federations will not get sponsors and undertake more events, giving access to Indian sportspersons to the new infrastructure.
Well, the federations have done precious little all these years, but even under an opiated utopia – suppose they do that from now, will they get access to the stadia?
The government has been mouthing the word Legacy with relentless grit. It has opened five of the best stadia for Operations and Management under a PPP scheme where corporates lease and manage the stadia for the next decade.
Of the 365 days that the stadia have each year, 30 per cent will be taken up by Sports Authority of India for holding events for which the original stadia have been created. The rest will be in the hands of the corporates.
Will the corporates take the leases? They will not be allowed to rename the stadia and thus will be deprived of tremendously valuable branding, so why should they? The whole meaning of a corporate investing in sport and claiming more CSR footprints will be demolished, so, why the hell should they?
Okay, suppose they do, but will they hold sporting events? The questions at the pre-bidding government-industry interface explains this: the questions were how to monetise the investment best, and will the government allow opening of bars and food courts in the leased properties?
For all one knows, the lessees will hold a few sporting events and turn over the stadia to be sold for every outdoor event permissible under the laws of Delhi state government. Again, fashion shows, awards ceremonies.
Decades on then, will a poor Vijender still be practicing on his own in a ramshackle ring somewhere in the dusty and blazing fields of Haryana or Punjab? Or a fortunate Abhinav Bindra be gifted a world class, air conditioned rifle shooting facility by his father, or a swimming trainer coaching a little girl with that extra something of talent in the neighbourhood tank!
If some of our worthies who run sports in this country are not held accountable to deliver on all the tall (and exhorbitatntly costly) promises that have been made, that will be the real “legacy” left for sportspersons post October 14, 2010!
