Commonwealth Games - All the best

As I write this, the inauguration ceremony of the XIX Commonwealth Games starts off in Delhi. I can only hope that everything goes on well for the next 12 days. Looking at the controversies that have marred the Games over the last few months, the entire episode is expected to be a rocky affair. The entire world has its eyes on Delhi, thanks to the publicity given to the happenings by the media. What remains to be seen is how things will be executed over the next two weeks.

The Games, being held in India for the first time in history, has given us an opportunity to showcase our strengths as an upcoming superpower of the world. As a developing nation, with an economy growing sustainably over the last few days, the success of the games will lead to a lot of significant decisions being made in the international circles over the next few months. If we are able to pull off the games successfully, we can expect a rise in foreign investments in the country over the next few years, a rise in employment levels which can in turn lead to a rise in the standard of living of the people of the country.

So much of hue and cry has been raised about the misappropriation of funds by the Organizing Committee. Media started putting it up on the world scene and what was known about the Indian system about corruption only to us, was made known to the entire world. What would have otherwise simply passed on as just another event, has now caught the attention of the whole world. I am in no way trying to appreciate the actions of the OC. I agree that the media had to play a role in making getting these things to the attention of the people. But in doing so, and in the competitive world that everyone is playing today, they perhaps failed to realize that their actions could make more harm to the reputation of the country.

What happened? As and when participants started arriving, the Games Village and infrastructure provided became the central point of attraction. The media still had not learnt the lessons. They again started broadcasting the poor conditions at the village and perhaps made things look much worse than they actually were. Again, I am in no way supporting the poor construction done and the collapse of an overbridge outside one of the venues. The result? A lot of athletes and well known participants pulled out of the event, which obviously doesn’t augur well for the country.

What was shown was probably the bottom 5% of the whole work in terms of quality. How many newspapers have shown photographs of the fantastic infrastructure that has been laid in place in different parts of Delhi for the Games? How many news channels have telecasted the good thing about the Games? How many media houses have actually brought the positive comments of athletes about the Games Village, especially in comparison with the Beijing Olympics to the public’s notice? Why do we always attack the negative side of things and fail to appreciate the positives? Till I received a mail, which had photographs of the other side of the story, even I was ignorant.

There was another group of people who were totally opposing the conducting of games in the country. They say that the same amount if spent on people and the poor, would have led to different results. What these people fail to realize is that these games have actually done a lot more to the infrastructure of Delhi, which otherwise would not have been possible. Flyovers, underpasses, grade separators, multilevel parking lots, drainage systems and lot more. This would help in decongestion of traffic on the roads of Delhi for the years to come. This would have led to the displacement of a lot of people from the centre of the city. But this was bound to happen sooner than later. So it’s rather good that it happened today.

Opposing the games on the ground of poverty in the country is actually stupid considering the fact that the very games would in turn bring in investments which would perhaps help us get rid of the same poverty. In fact, not many would have forgotten the intense lobbying done by Tony Blair and Jaques Chiraq for successfully bidding to conduct the Olympics in 2012, which London successfully won. When developed countries can go to such an extent, one can understand what exactly is at stake.

Another issue is the mountain made of a mole hill of the comment by the OC Secretary about the difference in standards of hygiene between foreign countries and in India. But hey, wait!! Isn’t that true? What is the condition of toilets in our Govt. offices, airports, railway stations and bus terminals? Again, that is not any excuse to any shoddy work done in any case. But who are these people to raise fingers against that when the pride of the nation is held at ransom?

For all that we know, the Games may just end without any major hurdles. It might just be one of the most successful sporting events India has ever hosted. Pray that nothing serious happens in the next 12 days and we all stand up in pride, as citizens of a proud nation. But let us not forget what happened in the background. The guilty need to be punished. And proper steps need to be taken to ensure that such things are not repeated in the future. But on the other end, the media also needs to know where to draw a line. There is a fine line of difference between being the first to report and holding national pride at stake.

Signing off with the hope and prayers that the games would be a grand success.

Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. This was the same man who I hated from the bottom of my heart when I was in school. Every year, every subject all we had to do was to study about him. Every language had lessons on him, history classes always used to praise him and to add to the misery, we had to watch movies made on him by each and every producer on every Gandhi Jayanti – which meant a national holiday sacrificed to learn more about a person, we already knew enough about!

But wait. Did we really know enough about him? Do we still? Honestly, as a kid, I always used to wonder why Gandhi was given so much of credit for the freedom of India. I was of the opinion that, he in fact delayed the freedom for India and it was he who was responsible for the partition of India. I strongly used to believe that either Subhash Chandra Bose or maybe the revolutionaries in Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Chandrashekar Azad, if they had their way, would have given us freedom much earlier.

But as I have grown up, perspectives have changed. If not for anything, today I salute Gandhiji for his ability to organize people. His sheer capacity to gather people in a matter of no time was perhaps his greatest strength. People were willing to do whatever he asked them to, without questioning him. And he led by example. He had no two faces like most of the politicians of today do. He was a man of simple living and high thinking. That he was hated by many and made a few enemies in the process is immaterial. What needs to be remembered is that he was strong enough to mobilize an entire nation with his thoughts and vision for the country. Even though the freedom might have come a bit late than it could have, what great have we achieved in the last 60 odd years of freedom? Everyone comes with a set of positives and negatives. It’s best when we can leverage the positives and make the negatives redundant to as much an extent as possible.

Salute to the great man on his 141^st birth anniversary.

Delhi - 2010

No. This isn’t going to be about the XIX Commonwealth Games to be conducted at Delhi. Twenty six and a half odd years since I was born was what it took for me to visit the Indian capital for the first time. A trip that lasted 2 nights and 3 days was indeed a very memorable one. I had the opportunity to attend the first ever India Today Youth Summit with the people who I have been closest to in the past year and a half. This post is going to be about all these.

Intentionally preferring the Rajdhani Express from Mumbai over flights to Delhi, so that we as a team could get enough time to discuss things among ourselves, we set out one fine morning from Pune. Ever since I was a child, long train journeys have always fascinated me, and given a choice, I would any day prefer a train journey over a flight journey.

Murphy’s Law always works!! Some wiring faults led to the power connection in only our bogie to be tripped for close to 40 minutes and that meant staying inside the coach without the AC. Other than this, there was no major hiccup anywhere and the train was infact ahead of schedule at all its scheduled stops including the destination New Delhi.

I had an opportunity to travel by the Delhi Metro as soon as reached Delhi. Impressed was I to say the least. Metro in fact has to be the best thing to have happened to Delhi in the recent past. Kudos to E Sreedharan and his team for executing such a complicated project in record time, which has benefitted people in a huge way. Metro perhaps has helped decongest the roads of Delhi to a large extent. It is connected to literally every part of the city now and even places like Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad which is an icing on the cake. So much is the convenience of the Metro that I hardly travelled by road in Delhi during my 3 days in the city.

An impressive thing to be noted here is the way Metro is being maintained. I was surprised to note the cleanliness in every Metro station that I visited and every Metro coach that I travelled. No stains of paan were to be seen anywhere, nor were any waste papers, bottles or anything for that matter. All the infrastructure, seat cushions, gliders, advertising hoardings were really clean. At a minimum fare of Rs. 8, the services are quite expensive compared to the other modes of transport. But that doesn’t hinder people from using it. I have seen people from all classes of the society travel in the Metro.

That brings me to the crucial point here. It’s not the implementation of discipline that’s a problem. Rather it’s the willingness that needs to be there. It’s more or less the same demography of people who are present in every other major city in India. But can we think of a clean local train in Mumbai? Can we think of everyone travelling in Mumbai locals by paying the right fare always? I have nothing against Mumbai, in fact I love Mumbai, but this question struck me when I was travelling to and fro in the Metro lot of times.

The Youth Summit went on very well. It was very professionally organized. I had the opportunity to listen to my idol Nandan Nilekani among a lot of other speakers. Believe me, I was thrilled to listen to him and he was indeed very inspiring. Viswanathan Anand, Pranav Mistry, Saurav Ganguly, Katrina Kaif, Sachin Pilot, Chhavi Rajawat, Sanjeev Sanyal, Mukul Deora, Jaideep Sahni were among the prominent speakers of the day. One thing that was common between all the speakers was the simplicity that they appeared with and the modesty that they portrayed. In spite of being so successful in their life, each of them was down to earth and interacted with the 600 strong audience.

At the end of the day, I was one proud person having been fortunate enough to have got an opportunity to attend the summit. I would personally like to attend Youth Summits in the future, atleast for the next 5 years or so. Who knows, after that I might just be one of the speakers :P

Murphy’s Law struck once again during the return journey, this time with the engine of the Rajdhani Express. The train started half an hour late and arrived at Bombay Central an hour behind schedule. All said and done, it was a really memorable trip. Gobbling food all through the onward the return journeys, card games till late at nights – which actually can be good teachers of business strategy, teasing each other on loads of issues, some serious discussions on important issues and all this marked my first trip to Delhi. Would love to be there again soon, in a relaxed mode, with ample time at hand and enjoy watching the actual reasons why Delhi is famous for!!

Capital Punishment for Terrorists – Is it sufficient??

The special court set up to hear the Mumbai attacks of 26/11 has finally come out with the verdict. Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive, has been convicted on various counts and has been sentenced to death. This is a commendable achievement by the Indian Judiciary, to announce its verdict in around 18 months considering that loads of other cases have been pending in the Indian courts since decades.

But the point to be debated is whether capital punishment or death penalty is a solution to prevent terrorism? A simple point to be understood is that a terrorist or a suicide bomber who is fully armed and on a mission, is definitely not bothered about being killed. Death doesn’t deter him at all. He is fully prepared to die the moment he takes up the mission and once done, it’s only a bonus if he returns back alive.

With that background in mind, how does a capital punishment help?? These people are supposedly very strong willed, and that in itself is a big challenge. But how many of such terrorists can be sentenced to death?? And just sentencing them to death doesn’t solve the matter at all. The decision has to be mandatorily ratified by the High Court. The convict also has the option of going to the Supreme Court and even to the President with a petition for clemency. And to add to the facts, there are 300 odd people waiting to be hanged to death in India, the wait being attributed to various reasons some political, some social etc..

In fact, Kasab will become a hero back home. He will be taken as an example for selflessness and commitment in future terrorist training camps. More people will be brainwashed and coerced into the act.

A terrorist should not be killed, nor should he be left to live peacefully. He should be tortured endlessly. He must feel the pain, which the families of the victims are going to live with for the rest of their lives. He must not be allowed to sleep when he wants. The treatment should make him crave for death and death should not come to him easily. The punishment has to be such that it should make someone planning a terrorist attack, think a hundred times before doing it.

Of course there will be hypocrites all over the country who will oppose this in the name of human rights violations. But it’s high time to act tough. We cannot just let these things happen again and again, and react to it later on. Hundreds of innocent lives will be lost (which would be forgotten eventually) and the damage will already be done. The terrorists will have succeeded in accomplishing their objectives. It’s time to be proactive and do something that uproots the evils of terrorism.