[DoroKickcrofe]

For a lot of people in India, these Games don't mean much, if anything. Cricket is the one sport that the masses follow, if they follow any sport at all. So you must understand that hosting these Games in Delhi has been kind-of a big deal only for the few elite who care about India's image abroad. For most Indians, money could have been better spent doing something else, anything else!

Another point to note is that the Games are being managed by a bunch of clueless politicians rather than professional sports management concerns. All the Olympic Games hosted in U.S. cities weren't actually hosted by American government, per se, but by various local organizations set up to bring the games to town and then to fundraise and do everything else that needs to be done. In India's case, this has been a politically driven adventure, and sure enough, you will find many Indians who now say that these Games should have been held in Bangalore or Hyderabad, or in the most well-governed state in India, Gujarat...which would be anathema to the ruling party because those places are governed by (and Gujarat has been a strong hold of) opposing party.

Of course, to the world, this is just a nice setup to compare (poorly) India with China. And in many ways, indeed, this is a microcosm of sorts of the reality (or realities) of contemporary India. You've got a country full of engineers and programmers that manage billions of dollars worth of projects around the globe. Heck, in New Delhi itself stands a great example of modern project management: the new subway system that has been built and project managed without a hitch, on time, and under budget. Yet you also have bungling local sports project that had about 8 years to get things built up and set right, and it goes about as wrong as it can go so far and makes the whole country look like a bunch of amateurs.