IT WAS ALMOST A YEAR AGO, during a soirée at a friend’s place, that I first received some insight into the delays and malpractices in the organising of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Some of the people there worked for a consultancy company that was advising the Organising Committee, and shared some details after much coaxing from everyone. Those were the days when great optimism and excitement prevailed about the Games, the first major international sporting spectacle that India was to host since the Asian Games in 1982. But that night, I soon realised that I was probably a late entrant when it came to awareness of the mess we were hurtling towards.
Karinthy’s theory of six degrees of separation—the idea that any two persons are connected by no more than six other persons—has created what is known as the ‘Human Web.’ But in the case of people who have lived in New Delhi for some years, it feels more like two, or at most three degrees between someone involved with the Games and the average Delhi denizen. Through friends, relatives, professional colleagues and acquaintances, there are innumerable links that make this city of more than 15 million feel much smaller than it is. And this makes it difficult to hide skulduggery.
So if you’ve been in Delhi for the past few years, you didn’t need to wait for the recent media blitzkrieg against the organisers of the Commonwealth Games to have a pretty good idea of the magnitude of the disaster that is in the making even as we go to press.
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