by MANI SHANKAR AIYAR
My fundamental objection to the Games is the distortion it has introduced in national priorities and our sense of social justice, that privileges a “spectacular Games”, as the Prime Minister has assured the nation, over a spectacular reduction in child malnutrition—running at 47 per cent of children under five. Is it fair that thousands of the poorest families entering the national Capital—migrant workers fleeing desperate poverty in the rural hinterland—should suffer their shanty town on the right bank of the Yamuna being destroyed overnight in the environmental interests of protecting the unimpeded flow of the sewer we call Delhi’s principal river while promoting the Akshardham temple and now the Commonwealth Games Village on the left bank of the same river, ironically almost exactly opposite the demolished slum of Yamuna Pushta? In Gandhi’s India, does anything go in the name of God and Mammon?
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(Thanks to Mukul Dube)