Tough Lessons for Delhi from Commonwealth Games

Seen as a major opportunity for Delhi and India to showcase themselves, problems early on instead highlighted endemic issues.

Hosting the Commonwealth Games was supposed to be India's chance to show the world that it had left behind the old stereotypes of an economy blighted by corruption and political interference.

Sadly for them their preparations for the Delhi Games have shown that staging these events do have a potentially damaging downside.

Rather than beaming images of gleaming stadiums and happy athletes producing world class sport the last 24 hours have reminded India that the 24 hour modern media culture has a nasty downside. Get it right and the world sits back and applauds. Get it wrong and your failings are transmitted to the globe's rolling news networks.

Delhi learning downside of hosting Games
BBC
September 22, 2010

Bridge Collapse Just One Worry at New Delhi's Commonwealth Games

The collapse of a bridge near one of the main stadia to be used in the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi highlights construction delays. Some are concerned that venues won't be ready in time and that the event will have to be postponed.

Representatives of the dozens of countries participating in the Commonwealth Games, a quadrennial competition among members of the Commonwealth of Nations, started arriving in Delhi in recent days to look at facilities and conduct security checks. The athletes’ village, built for the Games, is not ready, they say, and questions linger about security after an attack on tourists in Delhi on Sunday.

On Tuesday afternoon, a bridge next to Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the main Games venue, fell apart. The footbridge collapsed into three pieces, taking several workers with it and uprooting one side of the arch that supported it.

Bridge Collapses at Commonwealth Games
The New York Times
September 21, 2010