A window into India’s development story – the 2010 Commonwealth Games

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

ABSTRACTSports mega-events tend to follow a top-down, increasingly neoliberal, developmental logic that reflects the aspirations and material interests of their host countries’ elites. The 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG), held in Delhi, India, falls within this pattern. It also provides valuable insight into the country’s larger development trajectory. I locate the roots of the CWG’s troubling effects, such as slum demolitions and securitisation of the city, not within neoliberalism per se, but within a paradigm of ‘development’ that equates ‘progress’ primarily with catching up with the West. I emphasise the striking similarities between the CWG’s impact on Delhi, and that of the 1982 Asian Games, which India hosted while it was still following a state-interventionist development model. Much like the organizers of the CWG, the organisers of the Asian Games tried to convert Delhi into a ‘modern’ city cleansed of shanty towns and street vendors. Although this effort was ultimately unsuccessful, it produced many adverse consequences for the city’s marginal populations. When compared, the legacies of the CWG and Asian Games indicate that it is the larger paradigm of development at work in India that ought to be questioned, not only how it is actualised through state-interventionist or free-market (neoliberal) policy.