Price tag for Games 28 times first budget

NEW DELHI // The total cost of the 2010 Commonwealth Games will be almost 28 times the original budget, according to a new study that has given activists a powerful tool for rallying the city's poor against their desperate living conditions.

As the largest sporting event ever hosted in India, the Games have provided a boon for developers, with the government building or renovating 17 sporting venues, constructing a Games Village and beautifying many of Delhi's central areas. They have also brought a sense of urgency to completing major transport works such as the metro, a third airport terminal and 26 new flyovers. According to government figures, the budget for the Games, scheduled to begin in October, has already leapt to more than US$2.1 billion (Dh7.7bn) from $400 million. But a local think tank, the Hazards Centre, released a study this week claiming that the total cost of Games-related development was about $11.8bn.

The big question, critics say, is whether any of this expenditure is appropriate to a city where an estimated three million people who are classified as poor under the UN's multidimensional poverty index, which measures deprivations in education, health and living conditions. Like many of the city's slums, the Mahatma Gandhi Camp in the western suburb of Punjabi Bagh is squeezed in among mansions and gated communities, where most of its 2,000 residents work as servants and cleaners. Having migrated from all over the country in search of employment, they find themselves living in brick buildings only a couple of metres wide, with the threat of sudden eviction hanging over them.

"The Games have brought us nothing," said Prema, the president of the camp and a maid in one of the nearby houses. "The only time we see politicians is when elections are happening or when they come to take us to a rally. They promise us development and nothing happens." "We have no sanitation, no street lighting, no education for our children," said Mohan Lal, 48, a labourer from Rajasthan. "There are only eight toilets for 2,000 people and we must pay each time we use them."

They gathered, along with about 100 other residents, in a dilapidated hall in the middle of the camp for a meeting organised by People's Action, a nongovernmental organisation that was visiting a different slum every night in the run-up to the Games. They call their campaign "Housing not Hosting". The team runs through some of the expenditures being laid out for the Games, which are met with shaking heads and looks of indignation: $850m on stadiums, $200m to resurface sidewalks, $150m to "beautify" the Raj-era shopping district of Connaught Place.

"There are hundreds of these slums in Delhi with people living in inhuman conditions," said Atul Goyal, a co-ordinator for People's Action. "We need at least 10 lakh [one million] new homes straight away, which would cost much less than it has for 11 days of the Games. If the government is serious about bringing change to the lives of its citizens, it should give the same amount to these people." Under the Delhi Master Plan adopted by the government in 2007, there were supposed to be 150,000 new homes built every year. But the municipality's finance minister, AK Walia, said in March that all other construction has been put on hold except for "needs-based projects".

"There is madness in the government thinking they can make Delhi a world-class city in this way," said AGK Menon, an architectural consultant with the Indian National Trust for Arts and Heritage. "Their development models are based on western notions of stability, but what we have in this country is dynamic instability. For years, the idea of local area planning has been neglected, which means there is no way of giving local people a voice or making them feel part of the city."

Mega-events have a patchy record for development. Some, such as the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England, or the 1994 Barcelona Olympics, are credited with successfully regenerating run-down areas, but few see this happening in Delhi, where the focus has been on wealthier parts of the city. "The transport infrastructure is definitely a good thing but was supposed to happen anyway," said Bibek Debroy, a leading economist with the Indian National Trust for Arts and Heritage.

"The sports infrastructure is junk. The stadia they built for the Asian Games in 1982 have never been used fruitfully - only for weddings and rock concerts. Why will it be different now?" Lalit Bhanot, a spokesman for the Games organising committee, disagreed: "The Games are just one part of the development of this city - all the parts are working together. There will be a great legacy of sports and transport infrastructure from which all Delhi will benefit. The sporting culture at the grass roots will get a great boost when they see world champions perform here."

foreign.desk@thenational.ae