The Commonwealth games are fast approaching here in Delhi, they are in fact now less than a year away. The chief officer for the games Sheila Dikshit - I swear it is true - has promised to deliver an epic games with state of the art facilities for both competitor's and spectators.
I don't doubt what she says but they really need to get a move on! The city at the moment is like one huge building site. The redevelopment that comes along with the games is going to be a huge bonus for this amazing city, with new roads and flyovers springing up and a metro system the envy of anywhere providing a lasting legacy of the games. It should also hopefully wake the government and the people from it's slumber and get them to start taking part in sport and particularly athletics.
The Delhites and Indian's in general can be a little bit - to put it politely - lethargic! The nations favourite pass time would appear to be sleeping and 'just enough' would appear to be good enough for them. Most of the ex-pats I speak to say the most frustrating thing is the working standards of the Indian people. The work ethic is there but the attitude seems to be near enough is good enough and evidence of this can be found all over Delhi.
It is a constant source of amazement to me that you can drive past a flyover in the afternoon that looks like it still has months to go till completion, only to drive over it the next day. It is like someone has told them it needs to be finished by tomorrow so everyone piles in to get it finished and they do. They open the flyover on time as promised and the cars stream over and the traffic eases and everyone is happy. The problem is, at some point someone has said "sod clearing all that rubble up and fixing those crash barriers, we will do that tomorrow once it is open". Unfortunately the next day once it is open there is another flyover that needs to be opened elsewhere and everyone moves over to that and forgets about clearing up the rubble and fixing the crash barriers!
Everything has a feeling of 'half finished' about it and you have to wonder if they will ever get round to doing the other half. It seems to be an attitude that spills over in to sport with the obvious exception of cricket though it could be argued success there was only after an influx of foreign coaching and ideals. Football is growing hugely here but the money going into the sport is not increasing at the same rate and they are therefore plodding along with poor facilities, poor coaching and one would imagine by the sheer numbers, a massive amount of talent. The Indian 100mtr record is over 10.5 seconds and if you google sprinting and India it is virtually impossible to find anything related to Indian nationals. This from a country with an estimated population of 1.3 billion!
I am fascinated to know what the cause of this malaise is and more to the point, how do they as a nation snap out of it? The friends that I have made here who are Indians are in the main hugely successful,thus completely contradicting what I have been going on about in the previous paragraphs. Most of them have come from relative privilege though so have an advantage from the start but seem to agree with alot of what I say.
Everywhere you go you see people snoozing, on the side of the road, in the middle of roundabouts, on auto rick's, lorries,cars and even bikes. It is a national pass time and when I ask friends why this is they have no real answer. The most popular theory seems to be that is just a habit, something people have seen their father's and grandfather's before them doing and have just followed on. Our house keeper Indu snoozes at every possible opportunity. When she babysits she is often asleep before we are in the taxi and will always cop a few zee's in her lunch break.
I can't help but wonder what this country could achieve in sport and commerce if it got it's act together and woke up. They are leading the field in sectors like i.t. and their outsourcing capabilities are second to none. What if they were to turn these skills to sport. What if they as a nation made a decision to start doing things properly,finish jobs they started and stopped accepting 'just enough' as being good enough? Then we would see a huge change that would surely be beneficial to the people of this fabulous country.
I know exactly what needs to be done to wake them from their slumber and change the decades of indifference and apathy. A blueprint for the the children of India that they can follow to make them a super-power in sport and world commerce. Give them pride in what they are doing and the desire to get things finished.
I would type it out now but really feel I should sleep on it!
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