Corrupt Common Wealth Games

Delhi is hosting the Commonwealth Games October 3-14th. Great Britain and all its former colonies together in one location to compete in sport. A mini Olympics with athletes from Australia, South Africa, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, Bangladesh, and many other countries. It has been a hot topic since we arrived last year as they are frantically trying to finish building stadiums, clean up Delhi, launch a new International terminal, and get the Subway up and running. A very large task for such a poor and unorganized country that is known for having corrupt government and police officials. Well, the Common Wealth Games are no different than anything else they try to do. It is a disaster! The front page of The Times of India has documented the last three days exactly how corrupt and how unorganized the CWG committee and organizers have taken this event. In the last week the seating at the tennis stadium collapsed due to poor concrete, an athlete injured themselves at the newly opened swimming facility, and the list goes on and on. They are now finding that contractors for the games did not use proper building materials and there are serious risks of improper wiring and structural problems. Thankfully Ben and I made the decision to forgo the Commonwealth Games. While I'm sure the opening ceremonies will be magical the traffic to get to the venue will be far from magical. The games are currently 17 times more expensive than what was originally planned. In 2003 they estimated Rupees 655 crore and currently they have spent Rupees 11,494 crore. The games start in 63 days and they are expecting 71 countries of 80,000 people coming to Delhi. Time will tell if these games even happen.