India's Commonwealth (shame) Games

It was a few weeks ago that I blogged about the various illegal labor practices, particularly child labor, in the construction activities in New Delhi--related to the upcoming Commonwealth Games in October. 

The BBC's online correspondent in India, Soutik Biswas, not only confirms those earlier reports, but adds a lot more details as well.  Biswas writes:

I have just finished reading a 116-page report by a committee appointed by the Delhi high court on the "condition of workers" engaged in construction work on Commonwealth Games sites in the Indian capital. The October Games, on which the government is spending more than $2bn, is the biggest international sporting event India has ever hosted. The report is shocking. It confirms Delhi's worst kept secret - how the shiny new stadia and other infrastructure hide the exploitative and unsafe conditions that 150,000 workers have to work under.

 So, in a vibrant, chaotic and unruly democracy that India is, one would expect such conditions to be huge political issues, right?  Ain't so, writes Biswas:

But what I find particularly galling is the silence of political parties on the state of workers. The local Hindu nationalist BJP has made an issue about the proposed serving of beef to guests at the Games. The Congress-led Delhi government is going to town with a planned "good manners" campaign, imploring the city's people to behave properly during the Games. The parties of the Left are silent. All this even as the government cleared nearly 700 million rupees in extra funds for the Games, taking its bloated budget to more than $2bn.

Even CNBC has reported on this!:

The main stadium is months overdue and remains a tangle of cranes, and residents are furious over new taxes to pay for the Games.

Meanwhile, dozens of construction workers have died and hundreds of thousands are laboring in unsafe conditions in the rush to prepare the city for the Games, a court-appointed investigation said.

... "For poor people there are no benefits from all this," said Ramesh Dubey, a sidewalk vendor angry over a proposed hike in cooking gas taxes. "This whole show is by rich people and will only benefit rich people."

Oh well .... I recall the days of the Asian Games in New Delhi, back in 1982 when I was an undergraduate student.  I boycotted watching any of the events on television because I was convinced that it was a colossal waste of resources in a poor country. 

The lefty in me is always concerned about public expenditures that are not beneficial to the poor.  Which is why even in America, a few years ago I wrote an op-ed that government is not responsible for entertaining the people and, therefore, there shouldn't be any taxpayer subsidies for sports stadia and the like.  If only I ruled the world!!!