"Edward Verdes" [email protected] wrote :
Subject: Re: [Goanet] Re Commonwealth Games Thanks Vivan I do agree with you...the Indian media is the first to create this mess, they need something day in n day out to run their business...we have to be postive and support our nation. Do you think all the past CW games went off without any problems! It is said that for the Athens Olympics they were still planting tress on the opening day. With news coming in confirming the participation of NZ n OZ teams and also their thumbs up for the Games village, let us hope things will go on smoothly now. I am in all praise for the lady in Delhi...the lone woman CM Mrs. Sheila Dikshit who has been working hard despite all odds - the floods and terror attacks. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cwgarticleshow/6620914.cms But after visiting the Village this morning, Australian Commonwealth Games Association chief Perry Crosswhite said his country was happy with the facilities and that their athletes are looking forward to the Games. "We are quite happy with the Village and we are looking forward to the Games. The Australian contingent is coming," he said. "Absolutely, it's thumbs up to the Games," he said, when asked about his assessment of the Games. Crosswhite was one of the strongest critics of the preparations of the mega event till recently. Dev borem korum Edward Verdes Comments : Camilo Fernandes - Recently there has been extensive bad coverage on all leading channels i.e. BBC News, Sky News, etc. regarding Commonwealth Games in Delhi which has made every Indian bow his head in shame. It was disgusting to see the toilets/rooms filled with red paan stains all over which pictures were shown worldwide. This gave the impression that all Indians dont have hygiene at all which is really not the truth. It is really important that spitting/chewing paan is banned and so too urinating/answering call of nature in open spaces While there are many culprits in Indian politics who will sell their country or even their family members to make profit at any cost , many do their best for their country. While the vast majority are corrupt, we can pick up our Prime Minister, Manmoham Singh as a clean politician. Sadly corruption is a way of life in India and I cant even dream when there will be no corruption in India. If only corruption is eliminated, India would have been a powerful & fantastic nation. Instead of focussing on the negatives, let us also try to look at the positives. The following article by Shekhar Gupta, ( Source Indian Express ) makes interesting reading. For weeks now, we have played that game with such panache. We love to abuse and curse ourselves. But we are absolutely delirious with joy when foreigners, particularly the white Western nations do it. So every bit of scorn heaped on us and our capital by English and Australian tabloids is now being celebrated as if we have finally been shown our true place in the world. We have neophyte prime minister of Australia more or less predicting (if not wishing) a terror attack in New Delhi, a fact that she forgot to share with her cricket team before it left for India. We have assorted New Zealanders, Welshmen and even Scots turning up their noses. Now we even have the head of the Australian Olympic Committee suggesting the Games should never have been given to New Delhi. And once again, all we do is unquestioningly play these up as if they were certificates of great accomplishment of some sort. Nobody asked the preening-with-delight Australian Olympic Committee dude who lamented that the Games had to be given to Delhi because the Commonwealth Games Federation was under-funded, why he could not get one of the more "civilised" members of the Commonwealth to save the only thing that reminds their old subjects that such an anachronism still exists. Did we ask the Scotsman who wasn't sure his contingent would come if he, as the host of the next CGW, was conscious of the consequences if India retaliatated? Maybe because we found his "country" too cold, too wet, too small, whatever (of course we'd never complain about the Scotch)? And does anybody ask the big-mouth Australians if they have given the same advice to their cricketers with the next World Cup being staged in the subcontinent next year? Unless of course, they do not care so much for their lives and limb after their recent performances? Or how come nobody complained when their hockey team lifted the World Cup in New Delhi earlier this year? You have to be particularly aghast that South Block, which reacts with horror and alarm the moment any Pakistani even scratches his chin looking in our direction, has looked the other way as all this has gone on. Hear the Australian prime minister's speech again (it continues to be repeated every hour as if it was the nicest compliment somebody sent to India lately), and you will feel the same way. Nobody can guarantee there won't be a terror attack in India. But can Obama and Cameron guarantee there won't be one in their countries? Can Julia Gillard guarantee there won't be one in hers? Her country even sent its troops to fight alongside the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. There has to be a limit to gratuitous, patronising nonsense, but what can you say when you are not willing to draw the line? Or when you seem to enjoy all this abuse so much probably only because you do not like Suresh Kalmadi's face. The only thing that made you proud this week, and you have to thank Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for it, is that he refused to give time to Mike Fennell who is such a nobody that if you Google his name, the second entry would be about some obscure customer care manager. The high point on his very brief CV is the chairmanship of Air Jamaica. He should be lucky to get time with India's cabinet secretary, though, if we really wanted him to earn his living, we would confine him for a full working day in a room with our sports minister instead, who will bore him to death describing how he was the finest cricketer/ boxer/athlete, etc, etc, etc, in his twenties when he was also conquering all the mountains that were still left to climb. Let us not, however, fall in the trap also of blaming the foreigner now. We have to ask ourselves why we love the muck thrown at us so much. Of course we have messed up big time in preparing for the Games, and we must hold our government -- at all levels -- accountable. This was too important a project for the buck to stop as low as with Kalmadi (and no puns intended). The UPA inherited the successful bid, but never put its heart behind it. It handed over the sports portfolio to a minister who called them evil and wasteful, tried to withdraw and delayed preparations by two years. He is entitled to his view, and who knows he may be right, but if India had decided to host these, how can you explain letting him hold that portfolio for two years? And then you gave it to Gill, who, at 75, justified running the ministry of sports and, hold your breath, youth affairs, by claiming he could get the Games on track. He even earned himself the full cabinet rank for the only reason that it would help him cut the red-tape, so important if we were to get our act together on CGW. But did we? If leading these Games was his main KRA (it could not be winning more medals, or squatting on Indian hockey's management and throttling that game, which he has done so brilliantly so far), then he needs to be the first to go in the next reshuffle, which better happen soon. A mere reprimand from the prime minister, duly, and deservingly leaked to the media today, is not enough. The next one is S. Jaipal Reddy, our urban development minister who we all love as a great parliamentarian but who gives a close run to one of his seniormost cabinet colleagues for the gold medal in being indecisive. The truth is, everybody curses Kalmadi, because he looks every bit a usual suspect, and Sheila Dikshit, because she at least has the courage and honesty to be in front and take the rap, but much, in fact most of the responsibility for the construction of the infrastructure and stadiums lay with Gill and Reddy who, so shrewdly, have stayed safely hidden in their bunkers. Most of us have seen that SMS joke about how Kalmadi decided to hang himself in shame but the ceiling collapsed. The fact is that the false ceiling that collapsed was built by Gill's ministry. Of course you do not expect him to remind you of that. But let's return to the larger question. It is one thing for the prime minister to crack the whip now, but why was some of it not done all these years? Could it be that in the post-India Shining disaster mood, the UPA somehow marked out CGW as some kind of an elitist, urban pursuit that did not deserve too much time or attention but, because it was "unavoidable now", kept throwing money at it? When the prime minister, Sonia Gandhi and other top Congress leaders look back honestly, they may have to admit to themselves that they erred in distancing themselves, and India's national pride from these games. This is completely contrary to how Indira and Rajiv Gandhi had treated Asiad '82. You can't pull off great acts like these unless you are driven by pride. And it is because we pretended that we were not, that the entire world is laughing at us, as if they have found the devil of realism behind the Great India Story. Yet, why so many of us, particularly in the media seem to enjoy this, still beats me. Postscript: Story goes that telephones were so bad in Indira Gandhi's times that every now and then she got furious and decided to sack C.M. Stephen, her telecom (then posts and telegraph) minister. But each time she tried to call and fire him, the phone lines were down, and by the time they were restored, her anger had subsided. So Stephen survived. You will be told the one reason Gill and Reddy can't be dropped right now is that you can't do it now when the Games are on. And who knows, by the time these end -- hopefully brilliantly -- the anger with them would have also subsided. Only question is, Indira Gandhi could have survived with one C. M Stephen in her cabinet. Can Manmohan Singh survive with so many? Source: Indian Express
