When a nation bids to host a Games, it should understand that their ability to present the Games and all services and construction work related to it will be assessed by everyone thinking of attending and/or participating.
These Commonweaqlth Games should have represented a “coming out party” for the Indian nation, an invitation to the world to visit and do business with India. It is virtually solely in that context that the vast expense of staging such an event can in any way be justified, even as spending on health and education services often takes a haircut.
But by its tardy and sometimes shoddy work practices, its failure to adhere closely to the construction time-line, India has invited the sort of media criticism we now see.
India’s work practices were always going to attract public scrutiny. It comes with the package of hosting an international tournament.
But the unstable social and business environment, the apparent ineptitude of local Indian authorities to implement their grand design at the building face will have caused immense public relations damage to poor India.
It is such a shame. This exercise in frustration has also shown that the leaders in India also cannot be trusted. They continue to insist all is well even as it is apparent things are not. The Games have gone from the back page to the front page and that is rarely a good sign.
Filth in the apartments in the athletes’ village, sewage that backfills and overflows, little things like the wrong taps fitted for hot and cold water, shower doors which open inward instead of correctly outward are all issues that can be fixed over time.
But the time has come to deliver these Games and blaming the extended Monsoon rains for the problems is just an embarassing excuse.
All of these issues - sewage malfunction, electrical short circuits, concrete bridge collapse, and access to venues and village looking like a construction site with rubble piled in some places hard up against tourist sites and Games facilities, not to mention what should have been footpaths - could have been resolved had the construction work adhered to the recommended timeline.
I heard an interview with an Aussie architect whose company designed a couple of venues - gymnastics I think was one - and he said he warned the Delhi authorities two-and-a-half years ago they were already then going to fail to complete the Games precinct unless they doubled their efforts. Instead it appears they sat on their hands until these last couple of days.
Imagine trying to do business in a society like that. You’d go bankrupt. That, sadly, looks like the take-home message of India’s presentation of these Games. And no amount of Bollywood glitz will have blinded anyone to that sorry reality.