Fault Lines - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 27

Legislation conferring a right to information that was passed in 2005 has opened up a
new fault line - albeit a very constructive one - because, as in other countries, governments
can no longer assume that deliberations will remain confidential. Coupled with rising popu-
lar pressure against corruption, it has made politicians vulnerable to sudden and unforeseen
exposure of corrupt dealings and has undermined the image and authority of the govern-
ment and of politicians. It has also slowed down decision-making because politicians and
bureaucrats have become nervous of being accused, rightly or wrongly, of corruption. This
combination of jugaad, chalta hai and emerging fault lines has led to increasingly dramat-
ic and extensive project failures in recent years that have compounded India's tradition-
al crab-like approach to decision-making and execution. The best-documented and most
shaming events were the Commonwealth Games preparations in 2010, and a day in July
2012 when power supplies to half of India's population were cut for up to eleven hours -
said to be a world record.
All international games have their moments of crises before they start, but Delhi's went
to an extreme with its inefficiency, bad governance, shoddy work and corruption. This led
to international rejection of 'filthy and uninhabitable' conditions at the athletes' village,
just 13 days before the games were due to begin, which coincided with the collapse of a
new steel arch footbridge near the main sports stadium. Among many other problems, the
flats were incomplete or had quickly become dilapidated after being invaded by construc-
tion workers (and stray dogs) seeking refuge from their grossly inadequate labour camps
in unusually heavy monsoon rain. The basic problem was that there were too many people
nominally in charge, with no top-down coordination and leadership. Those responsible for
various aspects of the preparations and operations included Delhi's chief minister and the
central government's ministers for urban development and sports, none of whom had the
calibre or authority to lead such a mega event, especially not Suresh Kalmadi, chairman
of India's Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee. Manmohan Singh and his Prime
Minister's office (PMO) should have taken an early lead, but he played his usual role of
standing back from the fray, and the PMO lacked punch. Singh should have been encour-
aged to step in by Sonia Gandhi, but nothing happened, and Sonia and her son and heir
Rahul did not deign - or dare - to become involved.
In 1982, Sonia's husband, Rajiv Gandhi, who was then a Congress party general secret-
ary, had taken charge of preparations for Delhi's Asian Games when they had fallen behind
schedule. 17 As in 2010, there were 'vast numbers of overlapping government committees
and over-spends, with construction workers leading miserable underfed lives,' wrote Ved
Mehta in Rajiv Gandhi and Rama's Kingdom. 18 'The whole exercise is being transformed
by unscrupulous entrepreneurs with political pull into a money spinning operation,' Mehta
wrote, quoting The Hindu newspaper. 'It has led to widespread hoarding and black-mar-
keting of construction material. pushing up costs and, in the process, filling the pockets of