The missing wealth of common sense.

Why is it that New Delhi gets excited with something as drab as the
Commonwealth Games?

Sixty years after getting independence it should be quite obvious to
us why the "Commonwealth" was formed in the first place. It would be
a way of ensuring legal thievery of certain countries by her majesty
well after granting independence. No matter how cloaked, it is a
cunning term, and a dubious collective that we should slip away from.

If Canada, UK, Australia, India and a smattering of other
insignificant nations form the commonwealth, it is not hard to see who
has the resources and who needs to plunder them. Does India have any
benefits of belonging in the commonwealth? Is it easy for any of our
people to migrate to the other countries in this club? Of course not.
Do we need any monetary aid from any of these old coots? Definitely
not. So, why even pamper the idea of a commonwealth? Because in New
Delhi, you can afford to be a bozo in government circles and not have
to think afresh, ever.

The Olympics are not profitable for the host nation these days, and
this, in the age of television. The Commonwealth Games are not going
to be anywhere near profitable, because, the biggest sporting powers
aren't participating, and who cares about this event anyway? But the
infrastructure cannot be anything less than Olympic level, so we have
to build and build and build, a lot of which we should already have
had, but now finally will. We're spending 10,500 crore rupees of our
wealth, but for what?

News just came in that the organizers of the Commonwealth Games sold
TV rights for a whopping US$120million. Wow! 564 crore rupees!! How
lovely. Since there are no other tangible incomes from events like
this, what about the other 9936 crore rupees? Consider the
US$1billion plus the IPL generates, and the fact that our government
refused to give security cover for it and it ran away to South Africa.
Our own, home grown world beating event, chased away to another
country, while this shineless, colonial remnant of a Commonwealth
Games that is a surefire dud is very much here to celebrate and create
a loss for us. Very nice of you idiots in New Delhi.

Here's the latest joke - top British athletes are not even
participating in the Commonwealth Games! All their gymnasts have
preferred to attend the gymnastics world championships instead of
coming to Delhi. Now, what kind of clowns couldn't have, after years
of fanfare and organization, foreseen this horrendous co-incidence.
Indian clowns, who else?

Is it a showcase that will bring us prestige? If a sizeable
population of the world is not going to be tuned in, who is going to
give us the kudos? Nobody worthwhile. New Delhi went the whole hog
for the Asian Games in the 80s, but then, that was Asia! We are a
proud and diverse continent, with plenty of sporting nations and a
history that binds us. There is something to look forward to.

Now we have three white counties, one full of trees and ice that
actually stands to benefit from global warming and has no clout of any
kind in the international arena, one full of convicts that have
recently attacked people of Indian origin, and another an island that
supplied the convicts, and then, India, that was ruled by the thieves
from the island for two hundred years who still won't return a famous
diamond stolen from us. Some history this. Neither of these
countries is anywhere near the top in any track and field sports or in
any big ticket showcase of talent, having been regularly beaten in
numbers and medals in all disciplines by China and the USA. So, we're
not seeing top class sports action either. It is all second tier - a
whole tier above what India usually aims for, but a whole tier below
what India's cricket crazy crowds are used to.

Let's get over trying to rack up the frenzy. This is a shitty event,
being held in a shitty city that our own Home Minister had to address
the people of and tell them to improve their attitudes! Fucking
Commonwealth Games. Who gives a f**k? What distinction is India
going to get from hosting these silly gala events? Is our sporting
temper going to get a boost? Definitely not. Is the infrastructure
going to last a lifetime? Think again.

One can walk into any public stadium in any Indian city, particularly
the capitals, and see how dilapidated the place is, how badly
maintained, and how beautifully representative of our administrative
disabilities the place is. Not a surprise that we don't produce world
class athletes. But we have the gall to question Abhinav Bhindra's
patriotism when he talks more about how his dad helped him focus and
gave him his infrastructure for training rather than the nation that
did nothing to bestow upon him a culture of excellence. We should
actually be grateful he has nothing to say about India as a nation for
his honest opinion might be very negative.

India is never going to win a bid for the Olympics. Thank God for
small mercies. But that doesn't mean we should constantly piss away
money on what we're not good at. If the recent debacle of games for
handicapped people at Bangalore wasn't enough of an embarrassment,
what could be? There were no steps to the stage, and the Chief guest
had to be physically lifted up to he could stand on his higher perch
and deliver some speech! We're a nation of fumbling idiots in the
collective. It is a good thing we don't have ambitions of empire, for
if we conquered the world, we'd turn it into a trash dump.

Cold facts - why do we go to a sporting event? To see our team win,
primarily. Not much of that is going to happen at the Commonwealth
Games, certainly not in the disciplines we'd like to see some
spectacle in. To see incredible human feats - that's not going to
happen either, because the Commonwealth doesn't have the greatest
sporting heroes. To have a good time - we can do that in several
different ways these days in India, thank you very much.

If Doordarshan is going to be covering these stupid games on TV, maybe
that's enough motivation to leave the country for a while, on its own.
DD's sports coverage is less than 1 on a scale of 10 in terms of
quality, and those mindsets are not going to change anytime soon. I
wonder why they are still around. That is one organization that
should be scrapped from the face of this earth. What a blight on
media civilization. Not very different from our other pathetic
attempts at "showing" we're world class, since we never get to "feel"
world class in anything.

Our cricket team, thankfully, is doing it, and it is doing it for a
reason - there is enough incentive to be good. Our track and field
athletes are heroes in that they are trying to scrape a living out of
drab circumstances, and despite every attempt by the government of
India to stop them, they are doing well in some cases. We could give
them 10,500 crores of incentives to become better - 3 crore for every
international gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze. That should reap us a
lot more than this pomp and gala nonsense that Delhi seems to have a
fetish for.