Taking a page from Guangzhou book—planning for 2011 National Games in Goa
Lessons for Goa from Guangzhou, the Chinese port city Goa will host the 2011 National Games, a multi-sport activity involving athletes from different Indian states, the event which cannot match the magnitude and prestige of the Asian Games. The Goa government helped by the central government outlay is keen on hosting the Games to utilize the 500 crores, to build new sports infrastructure and the Games Village. Instead in neighboring China, Guangzhou, which will host the 2010 Asian Games is quietly going about its task of building new infrastructure in the form of roads, rail and metro lines besides repairing old stadia’s and adding new ones. The city has a lot to offer to the foreign tourist visiting the place for business. The nerve-centre of the Chinese economy, which produces one-third of the total goods manufactured from China. The authorities are working overtime to keep the city clean and also keep the pollution levels in check, lessons which can been successfully applied in Goa too. “Life in Dubai Sports City has been designed with people in mind. An authentic city environment, all aspects of day to day life have been incorporated, including a dynamic business community that includes commercial office towers and a strong retail sector, which presents residents with the opportunity to live, play, learn, work and shop, all in one destination creating a unique business experience.” “The Dubai Sports City’s trade area will encompass a population of approximately 800,000 people by 2011 given central location in the overall Dubai master plan; with an exciting calendar of international exhibitions, sporting events and concerts in store for the coming years, tenants are in a prime position to benefit from strong brand exposure and growing visitor traffic,” reads the message on the Dubai Sports City’s internet site. Goa which is battling to keep the monsters in the form of Mega housing projects in different villages across stat is it ready to welcome the National Games village in Neura village. Goans ought to know what model Games Village will be adopting to build the infrastructure for the Games. Will the Games turn out to be yet another mega housing project , wherein the village game houses are sold for the highest bidder, turning out to be another land-scam in the making or whether the Games infrastructure will turn out to be yet another white elephant. Preparation to create a model infrastructure for the Games in Goa has started. Last month Goa Sports Minister Manohar (Babu) Azgaonkar’s entourage of dozen odd sports and planning officials, attached to the Goa government visited the twin cities of Dubai in UAE and Doha in Qatar to get familiarize with the existing sports infrastructure in the city. They visited the under-construction Dubai Sports City and the Aspire Academy in Qatar - both projects which have been built by investing billions of dollars. The search for a perfect infrastructure master piece has taken the planners to the twin cities of Dubai in UAE and Doha in Qatar. Azgaonkar’s entourage of dozen odd officials and their wife’s visited the sin-city’s Dubai’s Sports City. Dubai Sports City is the world’s first purpose-built sports city on 50 million square feet of land and is in the process of construction which is likely to be completed by 2010. The cost an astonishing $3.2 billion is likely to scale higher. Dubai Sports City will feature four magnificent stadia: a 60,000 seat multi-purpose outdoor stadium, a 25,000 capacity cricket stadium, a 10,000 seat multi-purpose indoor arena, and a field hockey venue for 5,000 spectators. And except for the Cricket stadium everything is at a construction stage. The City will be the venue for Ernie Els’ first golf course design in the Middle East: an 18-hole championship course named The Dunes which will be the centre piece of a luxury golf residential community called Victory Heights. Dubai Sports City is home to a range of world-class sporting academies which will offer customized training programmes to participants of all ages and abilities. Manchester United Soccer Schools, ICC Global Cricket Academy, David Lloyd Tennis Academy, Butch Harmon School of Golf and World Hockey Academy are some the academies which have started functioning and some which are in the process of setting up their base at the Dubai sports City In Doha, the minister and his delegation visited the Aspire Academy, the multi-purpose sport infrastructure built at the cost of and inaugurated in November 2005. In sharp contrast the athlete’s village of the Asian Games is lying idle and has since turned into a white elephant- a peril which looms large for the purpose build Goa infrastructure. Instead in neighboring China, Guangzhou, which will host the 2010 Asian Games is quietly going about its task of building new infrastructure in the form of roads, rail and metro lines besides repairing old stadia’s and adding new ones. The city has a lot to offer to the foreign tourist visiting the place for business. The nerve-centre of the Chinese economy, which produces one-third of the total goods manufactured from China. The authorities are working overtime to keep the city clean and also keep the pollution levels in check. Guangzhou, the southern port city of China is gearing up to host the 2010 Asian Games - the world's second largest multi-sport event. The city wherein China’s opening up to foreign investors began, is set to welcome many a guests in two years time. And to meet the demands, the administration is working overtime. Besides adding new sports infrastructure and fine tuning the old one, the city fathers are adding new railway lines and metro lines to cope with the increased numbers. The existing road network is also being widened to meet the demands. China the most populous country is fighting to ward off the notorious tag of adding to the air pollution. The communist regime has adopted several methods to check the pollution levels in different cities which are in the spotlight. Guangzhou city in the Guangdong district, is one such city. Located in the southeast of Guangdong Province and north of the Pearl River Delta, bordering the South China Sea, and adjacent to Hong Kong and Macau. Locals informed that when an important foreign ministers or officials visit a particular area which is notorious for pollution the atmosphere, the Chinese authorities simply shut the industries in the area – a practice which cannot happen in a democratic country like India. And there is more to the tough measures adopted by the authorities on the pollution front in Guangzhou. The city is off limits for two-wheelers. There are twin reasons – one to keep the all ready congested roads some leeway and secondly to keep the pollution level in check. The only two wheel drives you see on the roads are in the policemen trying to rein order on the roads and to challan the erring traffic offenders. The Policemen also try to whip order in the city bubbling with hordes of businessmen from foreign countries trying to strike a deal with local business firms. What can tourist heading to Guangzhou, capital in ancient times, to three Chinese dynasties, expect? The place has a lot to offer for the businessmen from the tourist point of view - historic, religious, architect places abound, which need to be explored on one’s visit in the city. If one has not visited the places then they have missed on getting to know the Chinese culture and history in this part of the world. In any thriving tourism habituated place the demand for sex related activities thrive and Guangzhou was no different. Pimps operated at all the places which tourists frequented. There mode of operations- distributing small cards- the size of the playing cards- with pictures of nude and semi-nude Chinese girls and phone written on them, if one wished to get in touch with them and visit the joints where the world’s oldest profession was being practiced. The policemen occasionally cracked the whip in the pimps by detaining them for a few minutes or hours at the site where they found them distributing the cards but allowed them to go free. Our tour guide told us the policemen like in India are corrupt and they too indulge in corrupt practices. But then he also told us, the policemen fear their superiors and do not indulge in corruption openly. But if the city was full of pimps making a living out of the prostitution trade, there were beggars who survived on the alms. The beggars were not the only ones making a move to the city for survival, thousands and thousands of young educated Chinese youths are moving into the city in search of employment – a la Mumbai of India. “Most of the population in this city is young people in the age group of 24-40 who have moved from the villages in search of greener pastures. That is the reason you do not find much older people in the city. Most of the old people are in the villages,” said Lee, a tourist guide, who like many of his friends moved to the city after his graduation to take up a job in the city. But in spite of the thousands and thousands of villagers moving into the city you do not find slums, which one finds in most of the Indian cities. There is no garbage litter either and the Pearl River, on whose banks the first off-shoots of the economic boom started its waters are striking clean, not like the Ganges or the Yamuna of India, which are the hot beds of pollution.