CWG, Olympics and Ahmedabad

India is set to host the Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad and is bidding for the Olympics to be held in the very same city.

Dear Modiji, India is not just Gujarat. Please spread the love around. From the first Bullet Train to GIFT City to the largest cricket stadium in the country, Ahmedabad has been the chosen location for multiple marquee projects. Now, yet again, the biggest sporting spectacle in India’s history is being planned for the same city. It is hard not to ask: are you the Prime Minister of India or only of Gujarat? Do Gujaratis have the first claim on every major national project?

With full respect to the athletes of Gujarat, should India’s most ambitious sports infrastructure not be built where it benefits the maximum number of athletes? We are preparing to build shooting ranges, hockey turfs, aquatic centres, badminton halls, and tennis complexes in a state that has one of the lowest sporting footprints in India. At the 2023 Asian Games, India sent 655 athletes—only nine were from Gujarat. Meanwhile, Haryana, Manipur, Punjab, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala consistently produce India’s medal-winners. Yet the world-class facilities they need will be constructed far away from the centres that actually nurture athletes. How does this make sense?

States like Odisha have already built exceptional sports ecosystems and proven their capability to host international events. Why were they not even in contention? Hosting mega-events is enormously expensive, most recent Olympics have become financial “white elephants.” India already has pockets of excellent infrastructure. Why ignore them and build everything from scratch in one place?

Why this obsession with concentrating everything in one city? Let the opening ceremony be in Ahmedabad. But, let badminton be in Hyderabad, swimming in Bengaluru, hockey in Rourkela, tennis in Delhi. Let the Olympics be experienced not by one city but by an entire nation. This approach reduces waste, uses existing capacity, and turns the Games into a festival of all of India.

October to March brings some of the worst pollution levels in Ahmedabad not as catastrophic as Delhi, but still harmful for athletes, so we intend to hold the Common Wealth Games in the worst possible environment for athletes? Is high smog training going to be India’s new competitive secret?

India deserves a truly national sporting vision, not a concentrated display of infrastructure in one geography. Let sport unite India, not centralise it.