Friday, September 24, 2010

Whose pride? Whose game?

Educated youth of today needs to see that true pride can be achieved by overturning corruption and making our country source of pride exclusively by uplifting and empowering its citizens

Amidst the relentless unrest in Kashmir, domestic terrorism, and rising death toll in the steadily rising floodwaters, our nervous nation is dealing with another chaos of an unprecedented magnitude which the Congress-led UPA government claimed would bring in ‘pride’ to the nation: The Commonwealth Games. The CWG has turned out to be world’s biggest corrupt-wealth games instead.

Labourers pull a hand cart loaded with bricks and sacks of sand in front of boards advertising the 2010 Commonwealth Games
This mother of all scams in India swallowed Rs 66,550 crore on the beautification of the national capital for the games. This is 114 times more than the estimated original cost of Rs 617.5 crore, and four times what the government spends on the national rural health mission every year. All, in the name of pride. The question is: Whose pride?

Our prime minister said CWG would “signal to the world that India is rapidly marching ahead with confidence”. Suresh Kalmadi, chairman of CWG organising committee, claimed that India would set new benchmarks for other host nations. What a tragic joke on a country that is unable to deal with poverty, chronic hunger, flood, drought, a wounded Kashmir, an internal war with the Naxals, and a vast range of mismanaged violence.

India has so far spent Rs 70,608 crore on CWG. In an interview to a leading weekly, Kalmadi said, “From Rs 51,600 crore given to me, Rs 5,200 crore goes for rental, Rs 5,100 crore for salaries, Rs 5,200 crores to taxes — half my budget is just all these things. In Rs 5,800 crore, I have to look after 15,000 people, take them to hotels, look after all sports arrangements here, hospitality...” Now that’s a whopping Rs 38.66 lakh in hospitality per participant. Sports Minister M S Gill says, “We have not indulged in any extravagance.” Perhaps not. But Kalmadi manipulated tender bids by introducing a clause that made “only those companies eligible for bidding which had past CWG, Asian Games or Olympics experience”. That is why gensets, furniture, treadmills, toilet paper and sanitary napkins are being sourced from abroad, though all foreign companies come in with an Indian partner. It is said that the organisers bought toilet paper rolls for thousands of rupees. Treadmills were hired at Rs 9 lakh each. Normal air-conditioners purchased for Rs 4 lakh each.

Mr Minister, please tell us the meaning of extravagance then! While you were dealing with such astronomical figures, did you remember those 15,000 farmers who commit suicide every year in our country because their crops failed, and cannot pay back loans that usually range between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000? 

Let’s understand what Rs 70,000 crore is. It means Rs 70,000 to 1 crore people or Rs 7,000 to 10 crore people. Even if these were given as interest-free loans to potential bread-earners of this country, imagine what course the nation would take. Wouldn’t India as a nation emerge with genuine pride? Wouldn’t you be giving a second chance to many who would otherwise die of starvation or commit suicide? Also, Rs 70,000 crore means employment to 1 crore poor for two years. Imagine, in return how much this workforce would contribute to our GDP.

CWG opening ceremony will have a Rs 40-crore gas balloon and Rs 5-crore theme music. If you criticise such ‘gaseous’ items, designed to elevate country’s ‘pride’, you run the risk of being branded an ‘anti-national’. In fact, if you criticise any aspect of the extravagance, as former sports minister Mani Shankar Aiyar does, you are made the joker of the commonwealth circus by the Congress.

The problem lies not merely in politics, but also in our society and our upbringing which teaches a distorted pride. Our country, in its desperation to be a global superpower, ignores the majority of its population that lives in extreme poverty. The educated youth of today needs to see that true pride can be achieved by overturning corruption and making our country source of pride exclusively by uplifting and empowering its citizens.


SOURCE:
  www.ahmedabadmirror.com
 


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