“Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) Vice-Patron and Earl of Wessex, Prince Edward visited the Games venues and Games Village in the Capital on Sunday and expressed satisfaction at the infrastructure being developed in preparation for the upcoming international sporting event” reports The Hindu of October 11th.
“Commonwealth Games Federation chief Mike Fennell has warned India's capital Delhi that it faces a major challenge to be ready to host next year's games. Many facilities being built for the event have missed deadlines. Mr Fennell said there could be no more slippages” reports BBC News of October 12th.
Far from being satisfied, a concerned Mr Fennel has appointed a review panel to monitor the progress, as can be inferred from this report.
After reading different versions, what I conclude is that Mr Fennel was completely unhappy about the progress of work ( or the lack of it), but expressed the hope that with a top-level push and with work done at breakneck speed, the deadline may still be met.
This is the problem with news these days. Back in the days when we had just one newspaper to go by, life was quite uncomplicated. You just believed what was written there and carried on blissfully. Now, with multiple options, you are forced to read so many versions and then make a judgemental call.
3 comments:
Raj - During my short stint in Delhi, I met the Engineer in chief of CPWD who happened to be a Tamilian. I had a chat with him on the state of preparedness. He simply smiled and told me that everything will be postponed till the last minute after which a committee will be quietly empowered by the PM with special powers to execute the work since "India's image" would be at stake. He then remarked that "special powers" mean all tendering norms will be given a "leg bye", and budget will be enhanced to "expedite" the work. All policital parties will have a field day since anyone with connections would get a contract...so all are happy. Work would get done, he said. Looks like it is heading exactly in the same direction.Jai Hind..Balaji...
this is strange because all the indian media were like 'fennell is satisfied' and the foreign media indicates the opposite .. of course i will go with the firangs say .. and sadly what balaji says will in all probability happen ...
Balaji, if work gets done, in whatever manner, I will be happy.
Ramesh, that's the problem. When we stick to one paper, you have to unquestioningly accept whatever is the interpretation of that reporter. Many Indian journalists blindly report the official version, which are nothing but motherhood statements that everything is hunky dory. Foreign journalists may be biased the other way - they may love to point to the darker side. We have to form our own opinion after hearing from multiple sources.
A convention that papers like NYT follows, at least on op-ed, is that both sides of the story are presented on the same page or in the same issue. Indian papers rarely do that.
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