Sports

The changing face of Indian Capital Delhi for 2010 Commonwealth Games

by Ravi Dixit | November 10, 2008 at 12:34 am

998 views | 19 Recommendations | 3 comments

The Indian Capital of New Delhi is being made over to welcome sports persons and visitors alike for the commanwealth games in 2010. The common man had to put up with a lot of hardships with roads dug up and normal like thrown out of grear for some time but the face of the city has changed for ever and Delhi is coming up as one of the best urband cities in India.

Pollution levels are down with the entire public transport changing over to CNG, a relatively cleaner fuel powering the system and a world class metro service giving a viable alternative to private transport.

New Delhi: It's a city that has risen and fallen over and over again. For centuries, Delhi has been India's most politically significant city. And now the country's Capital is going through another transformation. It is seeing a quiet, yet a dramatic makeover ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

But questions like how much of that change will last and how it will affect those living in this metropolis continue to surround Delhi's redevelopment.

A hundred and fifty lakh people live and work in Delhi. And they are now seeing what could be the world's biggest city rebuilding project ever undertaken — with a world-class airport, brand new flyovers and transport corridors, and ultra-modern stadiums.

Over Rs 65,000 crore is being spent to redefine the image of the Capital, and make it a city fit to host the Commonwealth Games.

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In Mahipalpur — an area near Delhi —25,000 people are working day and night to build the world's second largest airport terminal in record time.

By October 2010, landing at Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport will be an experience in itself.

"All the services are below the ground so passengers will not see any services. The lighting system, air conditioning are automatically monitored for energy consumption," CEO, Airport Development, I P Rao says.

With state-of-the-art technology, connectivity to the Delhi's most-prized-possession Metro Rail, multilevel parking lots and more, Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport is set to be India's biggest terminal.

This world-class terminal will cater to 37 million domestic and international passengers every year, starting 2010.

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Sanjay Jha

at 01:51 on November 10th, 2008

Delhi Government has been working hard to spruce up the city before the commonwealth games in 2010.

Amitjha

at 03:10 on November 10th, 2008

Thats really very strange, how a sports event can really do the makeup of city, hope we will arrange this kind of event every town of india, so we can get better cities.

BY the way i cant understand the economics behind this, sports led city makeup........?

Ravi Dixit

at 03:19 on November 10th, 2008

In Indian none of the Indian Metros have been promoted as tourist destinations and most of the tourists use Mumbai or Delhi as entry points to Goa or Rajasthan. Mega sports event mean that the city gets a host of tourists into the city and the government spends to improve the state of civic infrastructure to serve them better.

In effect the residents of the city gain from the efforts of the government and get to enjoy the benefits of cleaner air and good public transport for keeps sake.

If you go back to Delhi Asiad in 1982, we got the benefit of Colour Television Transmission in India as all the participatory countries wanted a colour freed for domestic consumption and Doordarshan lived up to the promise to provide colour transmission. Till then colour transmission was considered a luxury that a developing country like India did not require and had it not been for the Asian games it would have taken maybe a few more years for Indians to watch Television in Colour... Seems something like a century ago but it was just 26 years ago...