The Commonwealth Games (CWG) are starting in 2 weeks time in the 1st week of October. There has been quite a bit of controversy about the Games: Delays in completion of the activities involved, exorbitant prices charged by contractors, monsoon in Delhi. Quite a few of Delhiites, I read recently, are packing their bags to go out of town on vacation with their families. The Australian CWG team is apparently deciding whether to attend the games.
Apart from problems that we create on our own or acts of god, I was thinking, what else could happen if someone really wanted to make a mess of the CWG. Let me make a list of the stuff that could happen.
- Sabotage of stadiums, roads, monuments, airports, hotels either in India or in consulates. A country that wanted to create problem might blow up its own consulate.
- Sabotage of software, hardware, telecommunication relating to CWG
- Sabotage of essential stuff like electricity, water, trains
- Sabotage / adulteration / poisoning of medicines/milk/water/edible stuff
- Spate of murders, kidnappings
- Take control of airport, station, Metro or hijack a train / plane
- Cause another an ecological damage; for example, create another ship accident and hence an oil spill
- Spread disease
- (Threat of) Exposure of previous embarrassing incidents, for example, of bribery/kickbacks
- Infiltration of militants planning for another 26/11 like incident either now or for later. Considering that the volume of tourists would undergo a sharp rise during the games and hence the immigration department at all the airports would be stretched, it might be considered a good idea to utilize this occasion for sending some trainee (or full fledged) terrorists now.
- Considering that the country would be preoccupied with the games, create more border incidents or encroach a few kilometers, say, in Arunachal / Sikkim / Ladakh.
- Create a hype/rumor of any or many of the above.
A lot of money would have been spent in making the preparations for the CWG. Serious incidents could affect the money inflow from tourism, from telecast rights. Indian government is especially not capable of getting into fast action in case of a calamity. Its tendency would be to see what CNN and BBC are reporting to find out what’s happening and perhaps to hear what Australia, US, Europe are recommending before it takes action.
Do we have things in place? The Commonwealth world and especially Indians would be closely watching events of the next one month with their fingers (and possibly even toes) crossed.
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