Delhi and CWG2010: The Games Behind the Games

Author(s): KALYANI MENON-SEN

Source: The Journal of Asian Studies , AUGUST 2010, Vol. 69, No. 3 (AUGUST 2010), pp.
677-681
Published by: Association for Asian Studies

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40929186

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 The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 69, No. 3 (August) 2010: 677-681.
© The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2010 doi: 10. 1017/S002191 1810002056

Delhi and CWG2010: The Games Behind the

Games

KALYANI MENON-SEN

Shanghai has the World Expo 2010, Delhi has the Commonwealth Ga
2010.

For the last two years, a huge digital clock in the office of the Chief Minister
of Delhi has been counting down the time (in months, days, hours, minutes, and
seconds) to October 14, when the Commonwealth Games 2010 will be inaugu-
rated. This countdown has set the terms of the discourse on the future of the
city since 2003, when Delhi won its bid to host the Games, defeating the Cana-
dian city of Hamilton by forty-six votes to twenty-two, to the surprise of many. By
all accounts, it was a close call - the technical evaluation judged both bids as
equally worthy of consideration, and concerns were expressed about security
given the bomb explosions in railway stations and other public places in
Mumbai in late 2002 and early 2003. What tipped the scale in favor of the
Indian bid was money - the bid document included an "overriding undertaking
and therefore binding commitment. ...that the Governments of India and
Delhi will support both capital costs and significant operational costs as well as
provide an underwriting against any operating or capital budget shortfall."1
The original budget projection in the bid document - US$422 million - has
long been forgotten. According to the latest calculations, the total bill for the
Games will be on the order of $1.6 billion. This does not include the costs of non-
sports infrastructure such as roads, airports, and the Metro Rail. The total
amount of money spent so far on both sports and non-sports infrastructure
stands at $3.2 billion. There have been several doses of top-up funding from
the central government, the most recent being $1.5 million for outlays on "soft
infrastructure like furnishing, facades and display elements."2 While some of

Kalyani Menon-Sen (kmenonsen@gmail.com) is an independent researcher and activist who works on urban
development policies and their impact on marginalized communities.
Commonwealth Games Federation, "The Report of the Commonwealth Games Evaluation Com-
mission for the 2010 Commonwealth Games," October 7, 2003, http://www.thecgf.com/media/
games/2010/2010_eval_report.pdf (accessed May 5, 2010).
See Rajeev Deshpande and Mahendra Singh, "Rising Cost: Games to Get Rs 700cr More,"
Times of India, March 19, 2010, httpy/timesofìndia.indiatimes.com/sports/events-tournaments/
commonwealth-games/Rising-cost-Games-to-get-Rs-TOOcr-more/articleshow/SeQQeiO.cms
(accessed May 5, 2010).

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678 Kalyani Menon-Sen

these costs will be recovered through sponsorships, tourism, broadcasting rights,

and the sale of merchandise, the Games are proving to be an expensive prop-
osition for the countiy.
The government of Delhi and the Games organizers are quick to point out
that this bill is not unreasonable, given what Delhi is getting out of the Games.
By October, Delhi will have 193 kilometers of Metro lines extending to the sat-
ellite cities of Gurgaon and Noida, a fleet of 6,000 new environmentally friendly
buses, an airport designed to handle 34 million passengers a year, nine rapid
transit corridors, ten new sports stadia, sixty new flyovers,3 and several thousand
kilometers of new roads. Monuments will be cleaned and restored, thousands of
trees will be added to the city s green cover, the Yamuna River will be restored to
life and health - these, say the organizers, will be the lasting legacy of the Games.
They also point out that all of these improvements were in any case part of the
long-term plans for Delhi - all the Games have done is speed up the process,
such that ten years worth of work and expenditure have been packed into half
the time. Senior officials in the Delhi administration cheerfully acknowledge
that the Games have served as a kick in the pants for an otherwise lethargic
bureaucracy.4
However, even the most enthusiastic supporters of the transformation of
Delhi "from Walled City to World City"5 are now acknowledging that the
balance sheet also includes some human costs.
The government estimates that there will be 3 million homeless people in
Delhi by the end of the Games.6 While the official view is that the majority of
homeless people are beggars, vagrants, sex workers, and petty criminals who
come into Delhi from neighboring states, human rights groups have collected
evidence to prove that at least 100,000 families have been rendered homeless
as a direct result of the Commonwealth Games. These numbers are likely to
double just before the Games, when the temporary on-site housing put up at con-
struction sites is dismantled and the workers are left to fend for themselves.
Evictions in Delhi during the lead-up to the Games have followed an efficient
and ruthless pattern. The experience of the Yamuna Pushta settlement, one of
the first to be targeted, is typical of the approach.7 This 100-acre strip of land
on the banks of the Yamuna River was earmarked for conversion into a prome-
nade. The settlement was home to more than 35,000 working-class families
(most of them Muslims) who had been occupying this land for over two

^'Flyover" is the commonly used Indian term for elevated roads.

Delhi chief secretary Rakesh Mehta, quoted in Outlook magazine, April 12, 2010, http://www.out-
lookindia.com/article.aspx?264891 (accessed May 5, 2010).
^Delhi: From Walled City to World City" was the tagline of a public campaign by the Times of
India. Delhi's largest newsDaoer croup in 2004, aimed at "rebrandincf the city.
Interview with Sheila Dixit, chief minister of Delhi, Outlook magazine, April 12, 2010.
Kalyani Menon-Sen, "Better to Have Died than live like This: Women and Evictions in Delhi,"
Economic and Political Weekly, May 20, 2006.

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 Delhi and CWG2010: The Games Behind the Games 679

decades, including workers who had been brought to Delhi by contractors durin
the construction boom created by the Asian Games of 1982.
Despite desperate efforts by the residents of the settlement, campaigns by
nongovernmental organizations and community groups, and appeals to th
courts, the so-called voluntary relocation program went ahead. In February
and April 2004, hundreds of homes and community buildings were razed t
the ground in twenty-four-hour operations. Residents, many of whom cou
not believe that a forced eviction could take place in the face of protests, were
taken unaware. They had not even removed their belongings and possession
from their homes when the demolition started - in many cases, children an
old people were still inside when the bulldozers started rolling. The police cor-
doned off the area, and those who resisted were mercilessly beaten and chased
away. The ruined colony was then set on fire. There were at least five deaths.
It is estimated that 27,000 families were evicted from Pushta, of whom only
6,000 families were resettled. Resettlement plots were assigned only to tho
who could provide proof of residence. The Delhi Development Authori
recorded only 16,000 "genuine claimants." The rest - more than 100,00
people - were left with no alternative but to move into rented housing in some
other informal settlement, as close to their workplaces as possible. Given the mis
erable conditions in resettlement colonies and the fact that they are located on
the furthest outskirts of the city, one could argue that those who were resettled
were as unfortunate as those who were not.8
Similarly, one could argue that the homelessness that awaits constructio
workers at the Games sites when their jobs are done is not much worse tha
their present conditions. Although legally bound to pay minimum wages an
provide basic amenities to workers, the intricate chain of contracts and subcon
tracts involved in each site makes it difficult to fix accountability and allow
on-site contractors to violate labor laws with impunity. Attempts by trade uni
activists and human rights groups to organize workers and to bring pressure on
contractors to meet their obligations were countered by measures to restri
access to the sites to "authorized personnel" only, on the grounds that the tigh
time and cost deadlines would not be met if workers were instigated again
the contractors by these troublemakers. It took the intervention of the Del
High Court for the government of Delhi to allow a Court-appointed monitoring
committee access to the main sites.

The report of the monitoring committee bears out the findings of earlier
reports by nongovernmental organizations and human rights groups. Workers
are housed in inhuman conditions, in temporary shacks with no ventilation
toilets, drainage, safe water or privacy. Most contractors have not provide
medical facilities, crèches, or schools for the children of workers. Minimum

8Kalyani Menon-Sen and Gautam Bhan, Swept Off the Map: Surviving Evictions and Resettleme
in Delhi (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2008).

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680 Kalyani Menon-Sen

wages are not paid on all sites, and women are usually paid less than men. Most
contractors do not provide safety equipment or enforce safety precautions, and
accidents are common (as many as 125 accidents have been reported in the main-
stream media). Almost all of the workers are migrants who are not registered with
the Construction Workers' Welfare Board, and therefore are not eligible for
benefits such as accident insurance and health care. There have been several
deaths from accident or illness. These have been dealt with by paying off the
family and sending them back home - there have been no inquests.
It seems incredible that the majority of people who live in Delhi are unaware
of or unconcerned about the human costs of the Games, while uncritically cele-
brating the metamorphosis of Delhi from a city mired in the dusty past into a
modern, dynamic, and investment-friendly "world city/' This is in contrast to
the high level of public interest and outrage around the mismanagement and
defalcation of funds by Games officials and contractors. Revelations of enormous
amounts of money spent on "refreshments" at meetings of various Games com-
mittees, of norms being flouted and money flowing steadily into the pockets of a
few contractors, of members of the Delhi legislature trying to grab flats in the
Games Village, of public funds being used to cover cost escalations - these are
discussed, condemned, and exemplary punishment demanded.9 On the other
hand, reports of human rights violations at construction sites and during evictions
do not elicit anything near the same level of outrage.
This blindness and insensitivity toward the poor is the outcome of opinion-
building strategies that tap into deep reservoirs of caste and religious prejudice.
In a strange inversion of reality, privileged citizens of Delhi see themselves as
victims of the poor whose mere presence in the city is felt to constitute a
threat to both the economic and social order. Those who live in jhuggi-jhopdi
colonies10 are demonized and stigmatized in various ways - as illegal migrants
from Bangladesh or Nepal (even if they are registered as Indian voters); as
beggars and petty criminals (despite the fact that they are almost all entrepre-
neurs or workers in the informal sector); or as people who make the city dirty
(despite the fact that many work as municipal sweepers, rag-pickers, and
garbage recyclers and are actively involved in keeping the city clean). Protests
against evictions by activists and human rights groups are branded as part of a
larger political conspiracy to change the demographics of Delhi and to create
Muslim vote banks.
The idea of "cleaning up" the city by getting rid of the poor has a powerful
resonance in a cultural context in which isolation and segregation to maintain
purity and goodness are familiar tenets of spiritual practice. News reports that
the Delhi administration is planning to send beggars and street children back

9See, e.g., posts on the Corrupshun blog, http://wvv^.cormpshun.corn/corruption/india/2010/02/23/

commonwealth-games-kalmadi-fìres-offìcer-appointecl-by-pmo/ (accessed May 5, 2010).
10Hindi, "shanty towns."

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 Delhi and CWG2010: The Games Behind the Games 681

to their states of origin, or confine them to six "holding areas" on the outskirts o
the city for the duration of the Games,11 have not excited shock or horror, an
more than the announcements that neighborhoods are to be cleared of str
dogs, or the hoardings with cute cartoon figures exhorting the public not
spit, throw garbage on the street, or otherwise disgrace Delhi in front of t
visitors.

Putting up a good show for visitors is dictated not only by Indian traditions o
hospitality - it is also an essential part of the larger game plan of urbanization in
India. Indian cities are now seen by both global and national policy makers
ideal locations for the supply of high-end services, particularly in the financial
and information and communication technology sectors. The makeover of Delhi
is aimed at attracting foreign investments, high-end technologies and profession
talent - and the Commonwealth Games are the perfect opportunity to showcase
Delhi in this new avatar to an international audience of potential investors.
Such a future holds little or no possibilities for ill educated and unskille
migrants from rural areas, except in ill paid and insecure jobs in the informal
sector. The increasingly precarious economics of survival in the informal sector
and the growing chasm between disprivileged groups of workers and the work
opportunities being created in high-tech service industries are leading to
visible increase in poverty - more old people begging at traffic lights, mo
families sleeping on the pavement, more children sorting through garba
dumps, more women looking for work no matter how meager the wage.
There is little sympathy for these people among more privileged citizens
whose commitment to the old values of charity, social solidarity, and concern
for the less fortunate can no longer be taken for granted. Individual enterprise
is seen as the route to salvation, and the poor are blamed for their own situation
Equity and welfare have been labeled as outdated concepts, and appeals to no
mative concepts of rights and justice arouse fury rather than concern. Analysis o
the historical and structural causes of poverty is seen as irrelevant to modern
times. At the same time, deeply ingrained notions of inborn privilege continue
to block the development of a truly modern conception of citizenship based on
equality.12
The Games will come and go, and some of the ugly realities that are being
shoved under the carpet will push their way back into the public domain. How
will Delhi deal with them? Will the sanitized and class-segregated city that is
being created for the visitors survive beyond the Games? Or will Indias messy
democracy reassert itself and remind the chief minister of Delhi that the less
privileged of her fellow citizens also have a vote?

1 ^ee, e.g., http://ibnlive.in.com/news/forbes-india-delhi-hides-beggars-ahead-of-2010-garnes/

103369-3.html (accessed May 5, 2010).
** Dipankar Gupta, Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds (New Delhi: HarperCollins India,
2000).

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