New Delhi 2010

I don't even know where to start on the mess that is the Commonwealth Games. After missed deadlines, allegations of inefficiency and corruption against the organisers of the Games, the collapsing foot bridge at the Games venue (which the Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit unbelievably says was not for the use of athletes....HUH??), the collapsed ceiling of the boxing venue, and statements from the CWG committes of participating countries saying that "the Games Village is filthy and unsuitable for human inhabitation", come the shocking photographs of the Games Village.

These embarassing & shameful photographs were released by the BBC and were subsequently lapped up the global media, which means that the entire world has seen these photographs by now.











These are photographs of the facility where athletes from 53 countries were supposed to stay for the duration of the Games. They are photographs of the place that the tax payers have been forced to pay Rs 70,000 crores for. Dirty rooms & bathrooms, stained toilets & sinks, dog shit all over the room, dog paw prints all over the bed spread, laborers defecating where they shouldn't be, water-logged buildings. To justify these pictures, the Secretary of the Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee, Lalit Bhanot, says that "Western hygiene standards are different from ours".

Excuse me?? Does he mean to say that Indians like to live as filthily as the pictures above indicate? That we like to have stained, leaking toilets and sleep on bed sheets with dog paw marks all over them? Maybe he was refering to his own hygiene standards while making that comment.

As if these pictures weren't embarassing enough for the country, there is a report that says that India bribed 72 Commonwealth countries USD 100,000 each to win the hosting rights for the CWG.

Oh man...how much more shame are we going to have to endure infront of the entire world? Countries such as Australia have already made an official statement that India should not have been awarded the rights to host the CWG. And you know what....I completely agree. We should not be awarded hosting rights of any such event until we learn to be honest, until we can offer our guests clean toilets and bed sheets, unless our security guards can provide enough protection to the athletes, unless our policemen can guard the female athletes rather than leching at their white skin, until we can have proper ambulances in place (rather than hired jeeps) to carry athletes to the hospital in case of injury, until we can learn to construct apartments that are suitable for human inhabitation. But now that we've been awarded the hosting rights of one such event and landed ourselves in a royal mess - not to mention embarassed ourselves infront of the entire world - the only way to salvage some of our lost pride is to cancel the Games.

Yes, all participating countries should cancel their participation. The Games should be called off. Only then is there a chance that the men behind this mess will be taken to court. Else, like every other time before, they will walk off scot-free claiming that the Games went off just fine, and all's well that ends well. And the hapless tax payers will be able to do nothing about it.