Delhi grapples with C'wealth Games
Delhi grapples with C'wealth Games
M.C. Vaijayanthi
Aishwarya Rai and her colleagues from Bollywood gave a taste of what kind of spectacle India would put up as hosts of the Commonwealth Games 2010, at Melbourne Games closing ceremony last week, overshadowing the 22 Gold medal haul by the Indian contingent and Samaresh Jung who won the best athlete award. Having hosted the Sydney 2000 Olympics and now the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, Australia knows better than us as to what is in store in terms of business opportunities. An Australian newspaper reported on March 31 quoting Australia's senior trade commissioner for South Asia, Mike Moignard, that New Delhi 2010 represented a $1 billion business opportunity, particularly for construction and consulting companies.
"Of that figure, $800 million would be accounted for by providing sports venues and facilities, and Australian design and project management consultants would have significant opportunities in the short term. The $1 billion worth of projects would be tendered this year, with contracts likely to be signed by December," Moignard said.
Anyone and everyone connected with the Commonwealth Games 2010 in Delhi have been away at Melbourne and in all likelihood Indian planners would have to work overtime now to get the projects started to be in place in just four years or else we might face the fate Athens did hosting Olympics 2004. Except for the visible Metro Rail which is being expanded with CG in mind, there aren't many ongoing projects to attract attention leave alone investment. Delhi has lost out on funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission this year for major transport projects like high capacity bus system and monorail since it failed to put forward concrete proposals for the projects. It has not even taken the first mandatory step of appointing the mandatory consultants.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said that her government had identified 50 projects costing up to $298 million to develop the city on par with standards set worldwide. Delhi has planned a 225-km super ring road this time, after having developed a ring road during Asiad in 1984. Over 25 new flyovers and road over bridges are expected to come up next year; 27 new hotels are coming up in Delhi of which 20 are in Gurgaon comprising 4,900 rooms as against the planned 10,000 additional rooms for 2010.
All this may be a great business opportunity, a time to rejoice the creation of enormous business opportunity, but there are analysts who warn of the flip side to this kind of expensive growth plans. Urban Planner Dunu Roy says that by 2010 Delhi would be too expensive to live even for the middle class. He also points out that several of the cities which hosted these mega games were under debt burden for periods ranging from eight to 30 years. "It took 20 years for them to put the Asiad Village to reuse and even when they finally sold it, the buyers were all NRIs. Similarly, the five hotels that came up during Asiad had to wait for years before they could see return on investments."
Consultants to these games say, "Countries opt for such international events not merely to display sporting ability but to transform their existing infrastructure facilities." But some others say, "The financial gains of modern games are notoriously hard to predict and hard to calculate after the fact that former Olympics host city Montreal will make the last payment on its $6.2 billion deficit after nearly 30 years while Los Angeles claimed to have made a $200 million profit eight years after its Olympics."
As of today, Delhi can take comfort in the fact that India is a roaring economy raring to touch the magic GDP figure of 10 per cent and that any infrastructure development happening need not lie waste after CG but would be a lasting urban legacy. Cambridge Consulting said the Manchester UK 2002 CG secured more than $1.7 billion of public and private investment for Manchster and due to the enhanced profile of the city, an extra 300,000 visitors would spend an additional $33.5 million every year in the region. But most of the sports infrastructure created for the games become too expensive to maintain post-games and in Delhi also it is doubtful whether it would be used later to nurture sports talent as India dreams of hosting Olympics in 2016.
The unfortunate part of this kind of large scale urban development is the equally large scale displacement of a majority of city slum dwellers who would be moved out to create a neat city. Asiad employed around 10 lakh construction workers and today Delhi has no place to accommodate such large scale labour population. Last time they settled on the Yamuna bank and around 70,000 of the Yamuna encroachers were removed as offenders polluting the river. Today, the new Rs 180 crore Olympic Village will come up on the banks of Yamuna river and one expert has even talked of narrowing down the flow of the river which would allow for development of the riverbed land. Planners have failed to present a complete a vision of what Delhi would be like post-2010 CG and therefore it becomes very difficult putting together a city which might be concretised end-to-end by the times the games are over.
[03 April 2006] Project Monitor
M.C. Vaijayanthi
Aishwarya Rai and her colleagues from Bollywood gave a taste of what kind of spectacle India would put up as hosts of the Commonwealth Games 2010, at Melbourne Games closing ceremony last week, overshadowing the 22 Gold medal haul by the Indian contingent and Samaresh Jung who won the best athlete award. Having hosted the Sydney 2000 Olympics and now the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, Australia knows better than us as to what is in store in terms of business opportunities. An Australian newspaper reported on March 31 quoting Australia's senior trade commissioner for South Asia, Mike Moignard, that New Delhi 2010 represented a $1 billion business opportunity, particularly for construction and consulting companies.
"Of that figure, $800 million would be accounted for by providing sports venues and facilities, and Australian design and project management consultants would have significant opportunities in the short term. The $1 billion worth of projects would be tendered this year, with contracts likely to be signed by December," Moignard said.
Anyone and everyone connected with the Commonwealth Games 2010 in Delhi have been away at Melbourne and in all likelihood Indian planners would have to work overtime now to get the projects started to be in place in just four years or else we might face the fate Athens did hosting Olympics 2004. Except for the visible Metro Rail which is being expanded with CG in mind, there aren't many ongoing projects to attract attention leave alone investment. Delhi has lost out on funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission this year for major transport projects like high capacity bus system and monorail since it failed to put forward concrete proposals for the projects. It has not even taken the first mandatory step of appointing the mandatory consultants.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit said that her government had identified 50 projects costing up to $298 million to develop the city on par with standards set worldwide. Delhi has planned a 225-km super ring road this time, after having developed a ring road during Asiad in 1984. Over 25 new flyovers and road over bridges are expected to come up next year; 27 new hotels are coming up in Delhi of which 20 are in Gurgaon comprising 4,900 rooms as against the planned 10,000 additional rooms for 2010.
All this may be a great business opportunity, a time to rejoice the creation of enormous business opportunity, but there are analysts who warn of the flip side to this kind of expensive growth plans. Urban Planner Dunu Roy says that by 2010 Delhi would be too expensive to live even for the middle class. He also points out that several of the cities which hosted these mega games were under debt burden for periods ranging from eight to 30 years. "It took 20 years for them to put the Asiad Village to reuse and even when they finally sold it, the buyers were all NRIs. Similarly, the five hotels that came up during Asiad had to wait for years before they could see return on investments."
Consultants to these games say, "Countries opt for such international events not merely to display sporting ability but to transform their existing infrastructure facilities." But some others say, "The financial gains of modern games are notoriously hard to predict and hard to calculate after the fact that former Olympics host city Montreal will make the last payment on its $6.2 billion deficit after nearly 30 years while Los Angeles claimed to have made a $200 million profit eight years after its Olympics."
As of today, Delhi can take comfort in the fact that India is a roaring economy raring to touch the magic GDP figure of 10 per cent and that any infrastructure development happening need not lie waste after CG but would be a lasting urban legacy. Cambridge Consulting said the Manchester UK 2002 CG secured more than $1.7 billion of public and private investment for Manchster and due to the enhanced profile of the city, an extra 300,000 visitors would spend an additional $33.5 million every year in the region. But most of the sports infrastructure created for the games become too expensive to maintain post-games and in Delhi also it is doubtful whether it would be used later to nurture sports talent as India dreams of hosting Olympics in 2016.
The unfortunate part of this kind of large scale urban development is the equally large scale displacement of a majority of city slum dwellers who would be moved out to create a neat city. Asiad employed around 10 lakh construction workers and today Delhi has no place to accommodate such large scale labour population. Last time they settled on the Yamuna bank and around 70,000 of the Yamuna encroachers were removed as offenders polluting the river. Today, the new Rs 180 crore Olympic Village will come up on the banks of Yamuna river and one expert has even talked of narrowing down the flow of the river which would allow for development of the riverbed land. Planners have failed to present a complete a vision of what Delhi would be like post-2010 CG and therefore it becomes very difficult putting together a city which might be concretised end-to-end by the times the games are over.
[03 April 2006] Project Monitor
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