October 3, 2010

October 3, 2010 is an important date for both the countries that I belong to - Germany and India. While Germany celebrate their 20th anniversary of reunification, for India it is the day that the 2010 Commonwealth Games will be inaugurated in New Delhi.

20 years ago Germans were celebrating the day that many feared would never come that the divided country would come together and be one nation again. Today Germany celebrates 20 years of being unified again and the country has gone through tough times as especially the East Germans, who were used to living in a totalitarian regime, had to adjust to the open market economy. The unified Germany has come a long way, but still steps are too be taken to make west and east equal.

For India the Commonwealth Games were supposed to make a statement that we have arrived on the world sporting stage! But especially the last month has been mainly negative news of construction delay, corruption, security concerns, a bridge collapse, a terrorist attack, an unhygienic games village, etc. And surely India could have done a better job had the concerned authorities not woken-up so late to all these problems.

But now the games are set to kick-off, so lets welcome the foreign athletes and support the Indians ones. Now it is over to sports as the Olympic saying of "participation is the biggest thing" holds key once more. India has to show itself in the best possible way despite all the problems.

And hopefully after the games there will be a big retrospection of how things were organised and run at the games. The Supreme Court has already said that it will look into matters of funding and other issues after the games. India quickly needs to learn from what all went wrong and rectify those mistakes. The key one surely is that government agencies need to hand over the organisation of such mega sporting events to professionals who understand all aspects involved. And then surely India will be able to bid for Asian Games and Olympics...