In WA 41, I waxed eloquent about the execution abilities of our people. I believe that was all well and true and justified. Let me balance that out with showing the other side of the coin. I do pride myself in being an equal opportunity offender so today I will offend our anna-datas. I was waiting for the games to finish successfully before writing about this. I believe the controversy about our preparedness broke in the media here with the toilet photos from BBC and Fenell’s “escalation”. At that point, I was looking at this whole thing rather amusedly since I knew the mess was going to happen. However, the sustained coverage from that point onwards in the media and the tone adopted confirmed a few things to me. I am not going to write any opinion in this piece, will just state what was reported. What I was doing during that time was comparing the news I watched, the web sites I read of the English and Australian newspapers with the Indian news sites and live feeds from NDTV, IBNLive etc. What I will present down here is a brief on what I found. Please form your own conclusions, the only thing I’d like to say is that it is akin to the zamindar of the village who is slowly going bankrupt and who cannot stomach the fact that the kid of the poor peasant who was indentured to him is now a doctor and has set up a hospital in his village and is doing well. We have our task cut out like I said earlier.
Beginning:
I believe the muck hit the fan around the 26th when the famous photos came out. At that point, there was convergence of the news between India and here. However, Sky news went two steps further and showed 2 year old kids apparently being made to “work” on the site. Also, there were trips to slums around Delhi and the usual comparison. Of course, the reporters were having a field day with the collapsing roof, the bridge and the security concern with the bogus security sting by that Aussie reporter. I distinctly remember a very repulsing interview that the anchor in the studio did with a lady in Delhi from some Australian channel asking how the conditions were. The body language of the lady was appalling – there was rolling of the eyes, the disbelief that the games were being held here, statements like “And you know about the bridge that collapsed, the roof that collapsed,...an almost audible sigh..”. The entire tone was that the games were going to be cancelled.
Next couple of days:
That was when Sheila Dikshit mobilized many cleaners and the whole cleanup started. Over the next two-three days, positive news started coming out in the Indian media. However for the next 4-5 days, the media here was showing the same toilet, soiled bedsheet and the collected rain water pictures again and again whenever the news of CWG was being aired. The stories went from “Oh how can they pull it off, it is such a huge task for Delhi”...to Fennel and Hooper’s daily negative comments to the Australian OC head’s comments that “The games shouldn’t have been awarded to India” (this one was incidentally repeated as a headline every half hour). When the army engineers came and started rebuilding the bridge, it was shown here that India has deployed the army to bring the entire games on track. Through the week, there were no pictures of the fabulous stadia, the games village with its awesome rooms etc. There was added focus on the athletes who were dropping out as well.
On the eve of the athletes departure:
This was the funniest part. Around the end of that week was when athletes from Wales, Scotland, England started leaving for India. The entire atmosphere created was that the athletes were going off on a war. I saw interviews of quite a few (4-5 through the day whenever I saw news) athletes who were leaving for India on the airports. The questions were “Do you have any concerns about going to Delhi”, “What do you think about the cleanliness, do you think it will be safe”, “Do you think Delhi should have been awarded the games, the Australian OC chairman said they shouldn’t have been, what do you think”, “Do you think the federation has taken a right decision by deciding to send you”. To their credit, the athletes gave extremely diplomatic answers to all questions. On one day, I saw them interviewing the Chef-de-mission of the English squad in Delhi who was asked how the conditions were, he said they were good etc. Then the bit was cut and the only part that was played was “Well, the facilities are not Five star as promised but three star, but we will manage”.
After the opening ceremony:
Things did turn around after the ceremony, when news were better, Sky however just banished the news off the channel until one Indian official in the Games Village came down with Dengue. That ran as a ticker below the screen “First case of Dengue reported in Delhi”. Then some silence. When the swimmers got ill, another ticker and news that said “Unhygienic water in the swimming pools makes 50 athletes ill”. This ran for a whole day.
During the games:
By and large there was no news, however, I saw one or two tickers about umpiring judgements etc. The next big story was on the athletics stadium not being ready on time. Again the same thing about “Looks difficult, don’t know how they will fix it”. To their credit, BBC was much better, they had good and bad stories and blogs and tweets from correspondents in Delhi. There were lot of comments on empty seats, ticketing problems and monkey and langurs and of course the noise in the stadiums.
Finally:
The closing ceremony was barely mentioned on Sky while BBC wrote gloriously about it. The whole feeling was of course of “India pulled it off”. Any report was qualified with “There were problems and it was thought the games wouldn’t happen but they were able to get it together in the end”.
You folks are free to figure out what you want from this. Just a small story to underscore the point – me and my son (Vedant) were visiting the rail museum in Swindon where it was “Thomas” day. This being a paid event that cost £7 per entry, there were not many desis around. A balloon lady was making different shapes out of balloons. She would only hand the finished balloon to a kid if he answered her question correct. We were one desi father and son amongst many locals. We did not get many answers right and Vedant was about to get weepy. That’s when she asked the colour of a character and after many wrong attempts by all, Vedant answered “Yellow” which was the correct answer. Obviously Vedant got the balloon, he was very happy and smiling, I was smiling and looked around, all the parents were looking at us with a murderous “Who are they and how did they win” look in their eyes (I could see contempt in their eyes – must be my imagination). We walked away from there since the mission was accomplished. Enjoy.
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