Saturday, July 31, 2010

Choose your destiny


This might turn out to be the Biggest foreign relations disaster in our independent history. It may sound difficult, but it is our moral and ethical obligation to suspend/postpone the 2010 CommonWealth Games (CWG) and open full investigations, preferably call in someone from outside Delhi, as they did for the Metro, seeing the fact that practically every govt agency in Delhi is in on it. What we need here is a leadership that chooses to be accountable rather than convenient. Choosing to keep going ahead with the CWG in the name of pride, keeping the fraudsters in the driving seat, will only cause more disaster. After all, you should never put a criminal in charge of the crime scene.

Appeal to Delhi Government:

Here is a different take on the issue and a solution for you that will ensure your long term success.
You are worried about what is happening. That's understandable. The Commonwealth Games were supposed to be the hallmark of your tenure. The jewel in the crown. The showcase to the world. But step off the clouds and look at the ground for a moment. It's covered in ...
...rubble and clear evidence of a major swindle.

It's too late to salvage the CWG. Accept it and move on. Too many compromises have already been made. Look at the track record. Deadline upon deadline was violated. What makes you think it will be any different next month? They will probably still be pretending to fix everything when the foreign delegations walk in, when the sporting events are supposed to begin!

A proper project of this magnitude, should never have gone 17 times over budget. College students should never have been kicked out "temporarily" in the name of giving accommodation to CWG guests. So many thousands of our citizens should not have had their lives disrupted, their expediture and taxes increased so exponentially, in their own name. Did anything like this happen during the Metro's construction? Something is fundamentally wrong, can't you see it? Look around the city. Look at the venues. With so much money thrown into this, with so much time and energy spent, is it at all possible for such a mess to be out there?

Someone somewhere, at every step of the way, has been taking in way too much money in exchange for way too little real work. We have all been duped. Big time. All in the name of our pride. They showed us the shiny trinket and like foolish children we walked right into their trap.

You have a difficult choice ahead; should you :
1. Plough stubbornly ahead to stick to the plan even when everyone else has violated it, or
2. Suspend/Postpone the CWG and follow the law.

At present the first option must be looking better to you. The second is apparently too much to bear, right? Let me give you a different perspective.

1. Plough ahead stubbornly and have the CWG.
Imagine a crime scene. A criminal has shot dead a little girl. There are eye witnesses standing all around. The murder weapon is also right there. At this stage, would you put the criminal in charge of the crime scene? Would you hand him the weapon, to do with it as he pleases? Would you leave the eye witnesses in his care, so he can eliminate them all? Would you allow him to get rid of the body and all the evidence? Or would you put him behind bars immediately?

If we don't stop this looting in our name right here and right now, then can you even fathom the consequences? The current scenario has left no room for coping with any disaster. Any tiny little problem that can happen, will happen. Infrastructure will collapse. Facades will fall. Accidents that have not been planned for, will happen. People will die. Many more will end up with something broken that had never needed fixing in the first place. This will be the last big event Delhi ever holds. No country, no other people will trust us, ever again. All the corrupt people who have milked this project for their own insane proftieering, are in it for the "bada haath", the one last big steal, get it? They don't care about the people, nor about you. As you read this, they're lining up outside the opposition's doors to donate in their kitty, and preserve themselves after you fall. What makes you think anyone will spare you once you are out of power?

If you go ahead with this in the same way we have with the same corrupt people in charge, there is a much higher probability of a total and complete disaster. Your government will 100% fall. There will be no recovery. After this, nobody will give this city any funds to clean up the mess. Delhi will be doomed and under a mountain of debt that it will never clear. Everyone will blame you for this. You will not be re-elected. Period.

2. Suspend / Postpone the CWG and follow the law.
This probably looks too horrible to fathom, right? Well, think outside the box. What did Sonia Gandhi achieve when she gave up the PM's post? Moral victory, right? And in all these years, hasn't that moral victory endured? Yes it has. Therein lies your golden opportunity.

Forget about the need for full evidence; right now it is clear as day and common knowledge that the CWG has become the golden goose of all the corrupt sections all across the NCR and possibly the country. They're all in on it for the big swindle. That's how you get a 17-fold rise in budget! But, at the same time, they have made themselves the most vulnerable. They've come out of the shadows. Everybody knows now who they are, what links they have - everything. Turn the CWG into a honey trap that will ensnare the entire corrupt establishment! If we suspend the CWG right now, they will have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The best laid plans will unravel. In one fell swoop, an entire bunch of corrupt officials, contractors, etc will be netted and exposed. With this, everyone will know your government as one that had the courage to do what's right.

So what if the CWG didn't take place on schedule? It's just a sporting event! Do you even do any of those activities yourself? We can have it 3 months later, it's not like all the infrastructure is running away anywhere, right? But with this, the reputation of Delhi will be salvaged, people will have respect for a city that came clean and did the right thing! Isn't that a moral victory worth having?

Conclusion: So what's it gonna be?
1. Continue with the messed up CWG and lose the next elections for sure. Short term gain and permanent long term loss.
2. Call it off, start an investigation and win a moral victory and the next elections with it. Short term scratches and permanent long term victory.
What will you choose?

2 comments:

Nikhil said...

Related news:
CWG alleged corruption: Kalmadi calls emergency meeting

Govt says no to IOA bid for 2019 Asiad: Sources

Nikhil said...

Even Chetan Bhagat has called for a boycott of the CWG!
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIPU/2010/08/29&PageLabel=17&EntityId=Ar01701&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

Another good blogpost on the topic: http://akshaysvision.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-time-has-come-to-boycott-again

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