Delhi Games: Impact and legacy

As the dust settles Lord Dholakia asses the impact and legacy of the Delhi Commonwealth Games.

The Indian table tennis player, Kamal Achanta, has said that the 2010 Commonwealth Games will leave a huge sporting legacy for all of India’s inhabitants.  He is absolutely right.  But it is not just a sporting legacy; there will be a social and cultural legacy as well.

Over the last two decades, it has been business, information technology and academia that have taken priority in India.  Sport has always taken a back seat, but this can now change. 

Indians who have never before taken much interest in sport are suddenly able to be part of one of the greatest shows that the global calendar has to offer.  They are getting to know about the different sports; about how they are played and about the sportsmen and women who play them. 

This is an important development, and we must all hope that seeing the Commonwealth Games in India encourages more Indians to get actively involved in whichever sport draws them in. 

The progress so far is encouraging – the Indian delegation of athletes was the largest group competing with 619 athletes in total. 

The Indian Ministry of Sport has a plan, the key points of which are to encourage much more community participation in sports, which will then lead to the overall development of a sporting culture in Delhi and beyond, as well as the self-sustainability of each facility which will provide a model for the development of future sports infrastructure in the country. 

The Games  provided the main foundation on which to build further future sporting success for India. 

The other, almost incalculably positive thing to have come out of the Games is the obvious good relationship that exists between the Indian and Pakistani athletes.  After so many difficulties between the two nations, it seems that sport has succeeded where politics has often failed.  It is all of this that must be the sporting legacy of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

We should not dwell on the problems that the Delhi authorities have faced during the preparation for the Games.  We need to look beyond the practical, materialistic aspects of the event, and try and see the vision which the Indian Government has always claimed would be the result of India hosting the Games. 

It is always claimed that a vision of a cultural and social legacy is something too intangible to mean anything real.  But this is precisely the point – such a legacy is intangible.  It is something that is created by holding onto those values and assets which have been created by the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. 

The rest of the world was invited to view Delhi, and through Delhi, the rest of India, through a microscope, and to have a chance to understand India’s social and cultural values and traditions, as well as its customs and practices, artistic expression and language. 

It is essential that Delhi made an impression on the rest of the world, and that the rest of the world actually remembers the best of what India had to show off and offer during the Games.

Hosting the Games has made India a proud nation – a nation that is unafraid to be itself and to display its unique qualities, while the rest of the world looks on. 

And yes, unlike somewhere like China that hosted the Olympics in 2008, there have been hiccups, but the difference between the two is that which is most important – democracy. 

India involved its people in the preparation and execution of the Games, and this is something that should never be underestimated.  This was a very important moment for India; the dream of becoming a sporting nation has been realised – it was a long time in coming, and is something that is utterly deserved.

Navnit Dholakia OBE was made a life peer as Baron Dholakia, of Waltham Brooks in the County of West Sussex for the Liberal Democrats in 1997.