Rs 1000 cr Nehru Stadium is in ruins

When a Rs 1000 cr stadium dies, also dies our tax money

Delhi played host to one of the best football club team in the world, Bayern Munich, yesterday. It included the likes of Thomas Muller, Arjen Robben, Schweinsteiger, Boateng and Ribery among others, all of who shone in the 2010 world cup football. The crowd also responded splendidly, and despite reports that VIPs grabbed most of the tickets available (isn’t that a given in Delhi?), there were still 35-40 thousand fans in attendance, resulting in a goodly football atmosphere, but if only!

The nation’s showpiece stadium, yes the same Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium where the opening and closing as well as athletics events of the 2010 Commonwealth games were held, was a mess, almost shambolic. This stadium, that used up Rs 1000 crore of our tax money in renovation for the commonwealth games, looks good from far, but is actually far from good.

No doubt the pitch on which the game was played looked good. I am sure so did the VIP areas and also the area where the media was made to sit, but one needed to move around to know what the state of this white elephant is (and no, I am not calling it a white elephant because it is actually white in colour). To say that it was shocking would be an understatement. It was worse.

Eager spectators walked in expecting to find a good seat and enjoy the game. There must have been high expectation as this is what they could see from outside here.

But this excitement came crashing down as soon as they entered the arena. They were greeted with seats that appeared not to have been cleaned ever since the CWG got over. There was at least half an inch of dust on every seat, topped nicely with bird droppings.

In fact, everything around was caked with dust, loose and also settled.

The initial reaction of everyone, without fail was -  Oh Shit! or something along those lines. Then began the search for something to clean it with. It was so dirty that none dared, at least initially, to use their hankies or dare sit on them with their sweaters and jackets on.

Some enterprising ones went out, brought some packets of chips and used the wrapper to scrape off the settled dust and blow it away, resulting in plumes of dust all around. I have never seen empty wafer packets being in such high demand ever. The toilets were another story. The much maligned municipal bodies do a better job of keeping public lavatories in far better shape.

And that is not where it ended. The giant scoreboard, around which a lot of interest is generally generated at any live event due to the information it conveys to the spectators was on the blink except the live pictures. The clock did not work and there was nothing to tell one who is playing, who scored the goal etc. 

Although Bayern Munich consisted of several big names, it was not like watching them on TV. One needed to identify them through their jersey numbers or some information showing on the screens, but in the absence of any information, people were left to do guess work. How unfortunate, for there were genuine soccer superstars and those who came could not figure out who was who. There were some announcements made too, but they were not connected to the stadium’s public address system. All of it was concentrated on the VIP galleries through an on-ground sound system, akin to the ones used in small rock concerts.

Surprisingly though, I did not hear a murmur of complain from anyone about the facilities (am not talking about the seats here). People just went on with it as if they were used to it and didn’t expect any better. What a pity! I was immediately reminded of Rahul Dravid at the Don Bradman lecture in Australia recently. He made a telling point about our cricket bosses not thinking about the spectators and their interest. He should have seen the state at this stadium yesterday. He would have been grateful the cricket bosses do at least as much.

The question that arises is that is there no accountability? If I remember right, each stadium has an administrator, a good number of staff  and a fairly decent budget for its upkeep. Then why this state? What do these administrators do? What are their KRAs? Who can take them to task for this sheer negligence.

Even if we don’t talk of the dysfunctional facilities during the game, is there no attempt to keep things in order. It is mine and your tax money that has gone into it dammit! One sincerely hopes the sports minister, who does not shy from theatrics when it comes to the cricket board, looks at this and takes some action. Unless of course, he himself is responsible for the mess. Well, in that case, we know where the rot lies and at least at present, there is little anyone can do.