One of the million instances where public money is being strewn around – needless to say most of them making their way somehow or the other to the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats – for making Delhi Games ready. If Aiyer has the good sense - equal chances though that it is the propensity and love to shock - to feel outraged by what he sees every day as he leaves his home – and bode ill for the Games he needs to be applauded and supported.
The cost esacalations have been presposterous. Delhi government alone has seen a more than 1000% jump in expenses from the initial estimates. Three years back, the government’s top officials sais the city would spend Rs 770 crore on the Games. Today it stands at Rs 11,000 crore and counting, most of it money that could have been far better spent elsewhere.
Sample the costs of just two Games projects. Barapullah Nullah Road, probably the single most important Games project and one that has been written about the most thanks to the interminable delays is costing Rs 660 crore and has missed deadline after deadline since the beginning of the year. The Ring Road bye-pass projects costs Rs 650 crore. Both roads are just 5-5.5 Km in length.
And in the former Delhi government is locked in a nasty wrangle with the contractors who have reportedly been asking for a hike given that they actually used launchers to build a bridge and did not leave just the pillars standing! Contractors who till last year had the staunchest possible backing of the political leadership.
It does not of course end with digging up dividers and building prohibitively expensive elevated roads. Look at the freshly minted CP mess and among the innumerable ditches there would be three which have been dug up for the new subways of which the original ambition was to construct 8. The work cannot be finished before the Games under any circumstances.
So what is obviously going to happen is that before the event, the ditches will be covered up and after it re-dug. At public expense.
This whole game should have been built some where near a city which is not so well developed i.e like patna, ranch,somewhere in orissa,then it would have pushed the growth of the city and the state.May be it would have changed the wheels of fortune for that state and city.It would have been fanatabulous.Delhi is so crowded even now that i think what would happen when so much people would come and fill the city...!!!!!