As the CAG report emerges this evening, Suresh Kalmadi’s crime gets formally endorsed (Don’t understand why the F*#$ were we waiting for this, when every day we are seeing multiple proofs of frauds and scams worth Rs 2000 Crs in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) which are of huge budgets of Rs 11494 Crs (ref TOI headlines dtd. August 10, 2010) which is Public money – your and mine tax money (I just paid some more tax on July 30, 2010! And it pinches !)
TOI carried Headlines news in its Front pages for a week as below :
August 6, 2010 – Despite denials of shady Games contracts, heads begin to roll. Flower pots worth Rs 30 crs…
August 7, 2010 – OC had hand in all big deals
August 8, 2010- Kalmadi says – ready for judicial probe and would not quit as 40 days left for the game.
August 9, 2010- Kalmadi cleared payment for AM deal which he claimed he had never heard of. (Documents exposed)
August 10, 2010- Indian Medalists at CWG to get raw deal
August 11, 2010 – TOI forgot the issue in awe of the full page BigBazaar Ad;)
August 12, 2010- Key investors in top CWG supplier have fictitious village addresses. Got hockey turf contract at twice the market rate, lawn bowls at 8 times.
Despite all this, do not understand the heights of shamefulness of Kalmadi that he is still having balls to stand up and not resign and the as usual gayish stand of Manmohan Singh’s government to sit silent on this matter for so long ! This evening, post the CAG report, Arnab in Times Now was triggering the issue of Kalmadi to be sa
cked or stepping down..seconded by all the panelists from Sitaram Yechuri, Vinod Mehta, Kirti Azad etc. But, when I look at one resigning or being sacked, it gives me a feel of ridiculousness and mockery as the same joker lies underground for a while and springs back equally or more powerful…forgot Chhagan Bhujbal & the Telgi scam ? and today Bhujbal is the king once again, forgot RR Patil and his stupid comment on 26/11 ? and today he is back into the chair…its mockery and lets not discuss sacking or resigning for that matter ! There are many such examples….
I ridicule Subrata Roy Sahara (don’t say that he too has some hand or involvement, but he is not a patriot for sure to think about the country and advice the citizen and media to hold back the issue till the games are over.) I ridicule Sahara for even bothering to waste time convincing media and people.
Let us understand 3 things now :
Point 1 : PROTECT THE IMAGE OF INDIA : Whenever I have kept meeting investors abroad, they have been showing immense confidence in India, more than that of China or any other BRIC Country…primarily because of our demographics, DNAs and stable and better image of the government. Else India always had a reputation of being a corrupt country (Lets us accept the fact that we are…. I don’t want to go negative on the branding of the country as the readers of this blog belong to various countries and origins, but since majority of you are Indians, don’t mind sharing that its still easy in the country to do any level and intensity of crime and roam free and even win an election post that and rule the country too…..look at Satyam and Ramalingam Raju for an instance…
So coming back to the point, since only 40 days are left and the whole world is coming to India for CWG, it is important to sack Kalmadi and all relevant officials involved and revamp the whole board else the focus of Media would be more on the scam, scamsters rather than the game as each day a new skeleton would pop out of the box and the world would carry back the wrong image of India and because of handful of corrupts we all would suffer, right from entering another country to doing business with them, all would see us with a sight of suspicion. Media has done its job and no one (Subrata Roy or others) can stop them as they are bringing out facts, but dammage control is required with revamping the whole administration and the government giving confidence to us and the world that no one is indispensible and irreplacable and India has more qualified and experience people to run the show much well and much clean...net net, without Kalamadi and team... the show can go on..
Point 2 : ITS TIME WE WAKE UP AND LEARN TO REACT IN OUR OWN WAYS : India is one of the most literate country – I agree to it and the figures say so….but there is a difference between Literate and Literacy….We are literate but lack literacy….complicated ? Let me put a perspective….We are literate means educated and academically strong, but when it comes to literacy, we lack literacy ….literacy of what is happening around, what has happened and what are our duties….Indian memory is short and we believe in Chalta hai attitude…. We pay tax and we spend 5 minutes to crib about such issues, be it IPL corruption, Satyam Scam, or be it CWG….it is a gossip and time pass topic for us over a cutting chai and we immediately forget it…and when it comes to doing our duty, we fail…we never stand for injustice (I am generalising and not being specific that all do so), push back the corrupt officer for asking for bribe, rather we encourage as we are getting late to work and shelling out a hundred rupee note is simpler and the biggest point we crib about politicians….today we crib about Congress and tomorrow we may crib about the BJP….but most of us don’t even bother to go out and vote ….look at South Mumbai which contributes around 18% of the countries TAX, only 40% people bother to vote…rest take Holidays, enjoy movies and have Page 3 parties on an Election day which is just another Holiday ! This needs to change.
Point 3 : SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS TO FRONT : Last point…. When I had been to Pune in 2000-2002, Kalmadi was a huge name there…. As Huge as Shivaji Maharaj in Maharashtra ! But if you go to Pune today you will not even hear K of Kalmadi. Even the paan-waala knows that Kalmadi has shifted towards sports where he makes more Money. Same is the story of almost all the heads of such associations (rich associations which are better on a cost benefit analysis than a city or even a state) are people not belonging to that field. What does Sharad Pawar understand of cricket ? Does Kalmadi even know how many games are there in CWG? Even Lalit Modi would not know what is “Manka dead”, and we have such people heading these bodies…. Where would passion, feeling or push come of one would not even understand the game and well, if you say they are good administrators, please give me a break....our IAS/bureaucrats are much better to do that or even someone from a common walk like Nandan Nilekani, N.Narayan Moorthy, Deepak Parekh, KV Kamath with fair credentials could be identifed to take this responsibility, if we feel Gavaskar, PT Usha, Milkha Singhs of the world are just sports men and incompetent for this job !. Well, or it should be a mix body comprising of specialists, administrators and if required (you cant do without because of various reasons) politicians. But all these should not be politicized. I dont know how much of this could a common man like me or you contol, but am sure somewhere down the line, this would make an impact !
Coming back to Kalmadi….but India, we are loosing confidence !! For us Kasab and Kalmadi are similar, (besides their last names starting with K;)…there are for similarities (1) Both played with Country and countrymens trust and money (2) Both are standing untouched today and god knows till when ? But one things is proven now…unlike the perception, the enemy is not next to us or in our neighbours, it is right there in our house and we meet him every time we tolerate or encourage corruption and contribute in building another Kalmadi !
And sincerely hope, that the Media (compliments for the initiative) and citizen like us with our own capacities and ways are able to throw out this Kalmadi in the next 24 hours and other Kalmadis in our daily lives !
