As the public spat between Indian Olympic Association chief Suresh Kalmadi and Commonwealth Games Federation CEO Mike Hooper has commandeered attention, one should not forget that the matter at hand is graver than mere public disagreements. And that is that Delhi looks starkly unprepared for the 2010 games.

Other countries too have faced similar constraints when hosting events of such magnitude, constraints usually country-specific. As we’re already seeing with Rio’s successful Olympic bid, and the focus firmly on whether that famously crime-ridden city can secure its streets in time, big sport events can focus attention on a country’s raw nerve, serving as an assessment of how the host can remake its image. Take, for instance, last year’s Beijing Olympics. The image Beijing wanted to portray was of a China that had arrived as an economic superpower; the backlash to this was widespread criticism of China’s stifling of dissent. The big story on the eve of the Games was whether the media centre had unfettered freedom to surf the internet. Similarly there are the examples of Olympics in Tokyo and Seoul. Tokyo had won the 1940 Olympic bid and would have been the first Asian country with the honour of hosting the Olympics — except that its 1937 invasion of China resulted in a backlash, and the bid was passed to Helsinki. (The Games were not held eventually because of the war.) It was only after reform had taken place in Japan that it was deemed an appropriate location for the event, in 1964. Then there was the case of Seoul in 1988. The intention of South Korea’s autocratic government was to display to the world that one of the Asian Tigers had accomplished astronomical growth; it would also serve to cement Chun Doo-hwan’s regime. Fortunately for the South Koreans, the media glare and international attention allowed protests to rock the streets, ushering in electoral democracy.

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