Having basked sufficiently in unparallelled pride and joy over our Commonwealth Games performance, it's now time to conduct a comprehensive post mortem
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The time is at hand to give praise where due ufffd especially to our valiant competitors and coaches for their blood, tears, toil and sweat. More importantly, it's time to hold the guilty accountable for the hurt and humiliation they caused the nation and its people.
The maverick Mani Shankar Aiyar, as indeed the prophets of doom and gloom, will not find much cause to celebrate.
Nowhere near being the showpiece and the "best-ever" promised by Suresh Kalmadi and his team, the Games were conducted overall in a surprisingly satisfactory and incident-free manner, following the scandalous, although somewhat sensational and unsubstantiated, media revelations of inept administration, ham-handed preparation and, worse of all, rank corruption in the lead-up to the event.
The meticulous manner in which Chile handled the rescue of its miners about the same time India's competitors were doing the country proud has led to the coining of the phrase "Doing it the Chilean way". It was the antithesis of our disgraceful "Indian way" planning and preparation which led to our becoming the laughing stock of the Commonwealth, if not the world.
Disaster
But for the last-minute stepping in of New Delhi and the marshalling of its many resources, the Games would have been a disaster.
Precious human lives were lost, and invaluable national resources spent in the staging of the Games which, after all, did nothing for the prestige of the nation internationally.
Worst of all, the (hitherto unproved) allegations of corruption have besmirched our reputation and shown us to be a nation of congenitally corrupt people.
Since justice delayed is justice denied, the people of our country deserve an immediate full, free and impartial investigation into the allegations of wrongdoing concerning public funds at different levels.
Nothing short of deserved punishment will meet the ends of justice in a country in which millions are still starving and thousands of farmers are committing suicide.
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