COMMONWEALTH GAMES AND A LOST DECADE FOR DELHI

EARLY last week, former Union Minister Suresh Kalmadi passed away in his hometown Pune.

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Though rooted in Maharashtra politics and known largely for his involvement in sports administration, Kalmadi's name remains inseparable from a defining chapter in the political history of the national capital: the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

As head of the organising body, Kalmadi presided over India's most ambitious sporting event. The stakes were enormous. Delhi was being remade with new roads, flyovers, upgraded stadiums, transport links and civic amenities. The Games, despite their largely smooth organisation and the massive legacy of sports and urban infrastructure they created, quickly became engulfed in controversy. That controversy, in hindsight, would shape politics and governance in Delhi for years to come.

Few voices expressed this more poignantly than the late Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Asked once about the biggest regret of her 15-year tenure, she replied that the "successful organisation of the Commonwealth Games did not get its due recognition." Foreign delegates, she recalled, praised Delhi for hosting perhaps the best Games in CWG history. The city received a significant infrastructure boost. Yet instead of celebration, there followed what she called a "campaign of slander".