Suddenly chasing CWG scams

On an animated Headlines Today talk show this week Dhunu Roy of Hazard Centre disclosed that the total spend on the Commonwealth Games (CWG) so far has crossed Rs 90,000 crores according to their calculation! "This is not the final figure - we are still counting" Roy said while M J Akbar took frantic notes as a co-guest on the show. Roy then went onto describe the CWG as the biggest public "private partnership project -"Public money was looted to fill private pockets"!

From inflated toilet rolls purchases to treadmills at mindboggling rates. What to speak of payments in a now liquidated dubious NRI owned company in the UK, Indian politicians and officials in charge of the CWG have demonstrated to what levels they can stoop when it comes to misuse of public money. Brazen, fearless, candid, bold - the officials have gone about splurging and stealing public money as if there is no tomorrow.

Naturally, it is a free-for- all season. Anger at the system, frustration of the political class, patriotism and dashed pride in what the country can achieve has all churned into a heady cocktail and is pouring forth on India’s private TV channels and the print and web media in a soap opera variously titled "Con wealth Games" "Corrupt Wealth Games" "The Great CWG scam" "Operation cover-up" etc etc.
But the question is - did the Indian media refuse to the detect the early signs of this rot?  Or did  they stay firmly on the Prestige and Patriotism page in the initial months? Despite enough warnings from civil liberties organisations, child rights groups, and  documentary filmmakers all pointing to the scandalous death of workers on construction sites, the violation of minimum wages of workers, the employment of children on building sites, the safety issues, the loss of green cover and environmental violations - the media was not sufficiently outraged early on. Why did they do only do sporadic coverage of the CWG projects progress? Why was the media so ostrich-like on coverage of the irregularities around the CWG for such a long period?

Some notable exceptions were newspapers like the Indian Express, Tehelka and television channels like News X, Sahara Samay and Headlines Today which did more consistent reportage and investigations on the issue. Several others steered clear of independent investigations, of exercising vigilance that could have had real impact and stemmed the rot in the initial days.

What they resorted to instead was what the media is guilty of quite often - mere ambulance chasing .Every time a Metro-related structure collapsed, the ambulances would be out! After two days of breathless coverage , however, it would all be forgotten. The infamous spat between the Indian organising committee and the foreign observer also got high decibel coverage and rightly so. But again, they failed to make the linkages. The follow-up stories on overall safety factors in the construction of the stadia and infrastructure like the Athletes Village and other irregularities that are now surfacing by the hour in the same media ,did not happen to the extent it should have.

Civil rights and other rights groups highlighting the irregularities had a tough time trying to get coverage on their findings because the media was not really hot on this story. Like some Congressmen and others who are now suggesting that anyone who wants to bring up these irregularities in the CWG 60 days before the games is ‘unpatriotic", the media at that stage too appeared, to my mind, was also perhaps trapped in a similar sentiment.

There were others who refused the see the writing on the wall. One activist recalls that when they pleaded the violations case in front of the political editor of the Hindustan Times, he simply brushed them aside saying: "how can such things happen in Delhi"!!

The foreign press, in contrast, from UK, Canada and Europe picked up the stories and highlighted it both in print ,television and radio.

In 2009 I remember watching a documentary film at the Film South Asia in Kathmandu-"Delhi-work in progress" directed by Krishnendu Bose highlighting the environmental violations in Delhi due to the CWG construction activity. The film had shown how the contractors would come in the dark of the night and mow down the trees to avoid the daytime protests. The Peoples Union for Democratic Rights - PUDR - came out with their report on violations on CWG sites in April,2009 and subsequently went on to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on workers violations in the Delhi High Court . The High Court appointed a committee to look into the violations and the committee which included people like former diplomat Arundhuti Ghosh and Laxmidhar Misra, of  the NHRC,  came out with a scathing critique of the violations.

Till today the government has not filed the names of the 45 workers who--they have finally admitted in Parliament--have been killed in accidents on the sites. Will anyone ever know what happened to their poor families and the fact that they lost their bread-winner? Even the total toll is mired in controversy. Under duress the government has admitted to 45 deaths but the civil liberties groups and reporters from TV channels have said the number is higher. One Headlines Today reporter who went undercover and reported on this "dark underbelly" of the CWG put the number at over 100! There is no record of who these workers are and how, when and where their families will be given the compensation and by whom. 

Even today, despite all the floor- to- floor coverage on the financial irregularities that are being highlighted, not many in the media are dwelling on the utterly exploitative conditions in which the migrant workers have found themselves in the CWG projects.

For many, though, it is better late than never. Human Rights Lawyer Colin Gonsalves who is the senior counsel for the PUDR public interest litigation is glad that the revelations from the Central Vigilance Commission have finally shaken up the media: "This is a country of a 1000 scams and media is constantly chasing something or the other...they did come into this story late but now they are doing an excellent job in the last one week". 

A vigilant, free media and democracy go hand in hand. If the Fourth Estate does not do process reporting consistently, it will remain stuck as ambulance chasers. The worst casualty then is democracy and civic society. The CWG scandal is a perfect case in point.