Is India's Commonwealth games village ready to host athletes?
| New Delhi, India
Just five days out from the start of the Delhi Commonwealth Games, organizers are intent on stamping out any indication that facilities remain subpar.
After extending the original 48-hour deadline four days to clean and repair the athlete's village, New Delhi's chief minister has announced that all cleanup work at the village has been completed.
Lifts are functional, all flats are clean, and there is no water pooling up anywhere inside the village, she said after a tour of the facilities. Extra staff had been drafted in from the Delhi municipal authority and even five-star hotels.
This sort of last-minute-ism is hardly unusual in India: In fact, the whole affair has widely been referred to as a “monsoon wedding approach,” where everyone and their grandmothers are roped into stringing up lights, sweeping the staircase, and folding napkins to make sure everything is ready.
Even as the cleanup wound up, the village was already a hive of activity, with around 3,100 athletes from around the world already here. Another 1,150 are due to arrive Wednesday.
Security has swung into high gear: Police and military forces have fully taken over all games venues, and the streets of the capital are teeming with security.
Patroling the streets and venues are 100,000 police officers, 17,500 paramilitary forces, 3,000 commandos, 100 antisabotage teams, 200 dogs, and 15 bomb disposal squads, according to officials. Helicopters with armed commandos on board also are at the ready, according to officials.
Nevertheless, questions of whether that security will be enough haven't gone away.
