t****n
发帖数: 2601 | 1 India wants to be a great power. So why are its Commonwealth Games such a
mess?
Network NewsX Profile
By Jason Overdorf
Sunday, October 3, 2010
NEW DELHI -- The Commonwealth Games, which begin here Sunday, were supposed
to showcase New Delhi's emergence as a world-class city and India's ascent
to major-power status. In a sort of Olympics-lite for the erstwhile British
Empire, thousands of elite athletes from 71 nations and territories are to
compete in everything from boxing to lawn bowling. But in the days before
the opening ceremony, the world was instead treated to a farce of failure
and recrimination.
This Story
After setbacks, Commonwealth Games off to strong start in India
The games just started, but India has already lost
Local hospitals, reeling from an epidemic of dengue fever, reported four
patients to a bed. The road I take every morning to go jogging in a local
park disintegrated into a minefield of craters under the monsoon rains. For
the media tour last month, the competition venues looked impressive enough -
- although showpiece Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was still under construction.
But that was the least of New Delhi's problems.
International sports officials touring the athletes' housing at the Games
Village found rooms littered with construction debris and walls stained red
with betel-leaf-colored spit. Monkeys and stray dogs ran amok, and an
underpaid, overworked laborer had acrobatically left his own special
signature -- a coil of excrement in one of the sinks. Instead of a
celebration of Delhi on a global stage, the run-up to the games was a series
of humiliations.
It was also an ice-water wakeup. India's huge population and rapidly growing
economy have long drawn parallels to China's, and India's debut on the
international athletic stage naturally prompted comparisons with the
dazzling Beijing Olympics of 2008. But India, it turns out, is no China.
"The lesson that we have to learn is that we have to improve our
implementation," said Himanshu Jha of National Social Watch, an organization
that monitors government corruption. Jha thinks the government is "in
complete disarray: It's nonresponsive, it doesn't deliver on time, and when
it does, it's at a much higher cost" than is justified.
The juxtaposition of Beijing's Olympic triumph and Delhi's Commonwealth
shame highlights the most ominous signals that collapsing bridges and
dissolving roads send for India's future. Everyone knows that China builds
awe-inspiring railways and highways and stadiums -- and brutally crushes
dissent -- while India builds nothing and lets everybody complain, criticize
, protest and file suit. But too much democracy is not India's problem and
is not the reason the Commonwealth Games are such a debacle. The nation
suffers from a much more common ailment -- too little. As Indiana University
professor Sumit Ganguly told me, "The rule of law is fractured, and
democracy has become an excuse for appalling governance."
Too enamored of its reputation as the world's largest democracy, India
appears to be headed in the wrong direction.
I lived in Beijing in 1995 and 1996 and again in 1998, when China was just
beginning to believe in its own foretold economic rise. In 1995, when the
chairman of Kodak said that multinationals that failed in China would soon
cease to exist, it had an unconvincing one-roll-of-film-per-family ring to
it. In 1998, as Beijing worked on its Olympic bid, the skyline showed cranes
in every direction, and when I came back for a visit in 2000 -- a year
before Beijing was awarded the Games -- the Chaoyang neighborhood I knew so
well had changed so dramatically that I got lost.
In some ways, the atmosphere is similar in Delhi today. India liberalized
its economy in 1991, 13 years after Deng Xiaoping opened China's doors, and
despite the differences between the two countries, it's often said that
India is following in China's footsteps -- 10 or 15 years behind. The
conventional wisdom from bankers and consultants has been that India's
problems in building power plants, highways and ports can be offset by the
strength of its institutional infrastructure -- namely, its democratic
government, codified rule of law, free press and civil society. Moreover, as
China's population ages, India's is getting younger, purportedly providing
a "demographic dividend" that will see India become the world's labor force
by 2030.
But while China's fear of losing face has helped it avoid complacency, India
has concluded that its rise to become one of the world's economic powers is
inevitable. As if it will be solved by magic, concern about the growing
overpopulation problem has been supplanted by enthusiasm about the next
generation's legion of workers. For four years after Delhi won the bid for
the Commonwealth Games in 2003, India's senior officials turned a blind eye
as the project stagnated, finally stepping in when it was too late to avoid
humiliation. Only after a footbridge collapsed last month, injuring roughly
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发帖数: 2319 | 2 谁给个abstract？
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【在 t****n 的大作中提到】
: India wants to be a great power. So why are its Commonwealth Games such a
: mess?
: Network NewsX Profile
: By Jason Overdorf
: Sunday, October 3, 2010
: NEW DELHI -- The Commonwealth Games, which begin here Sunday, were supposed
: to showcase New Delhi's emergence as a world-class city and India's ascent
: to major-power status. In a sort of Olympics-lite for the erstwhile British
: Empire, thousands of elite athletes from 71 nations and territories are to
: compete in everything from boxing to lawn bowling. But in the days before
| t****n
发帖数: 2601 | 3 看了今天加拿大报道
左翼报道了开幕式
说开幕式没出问题，说加拿大受到欢迎 等等
受到老印读者批评，认为媒体没给予热情公正评价
右翼媒体不关心印度开幕式，相反在那里批评中国人权和产品含铅
读者评论有赞扬，有批评。
批评主要说印度人自信傲慢，包括他们总统在开幕式上自吹superpower，还有印度从上
到下自封世界最大民主国家 | y***l
发帖数: 6963 | 4 中国领导人从来没有说过自己是superpower吧？
【在 t****n 的大作中提到】
: 看了今天加拿大报道
: 左翼报道了开幕式
: 说开幕式没出问题，说加拿大受到欢迎 等等
: 受到老印读者批评，认为媒体没给予热情公正评价
: 右翼媒体不关心印度开幕式，相反在那里批评中国人权和产品含铅
: 读者评论有赞扬，有批评。
: 批评主要说印度人自信傲慢，包括他们总统在开幕式上自吹superpower，还有印度从上
: 到下自封世界最大民主国家
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