The claims of British doctors and scientists can always be re-doubted whether the New Delhi bug actually originated from the Indian capital it has been named after but corruption is one adamant superbug that refuses to leave the power corridors of New Delhi. This time the bug bit a somebody who has been a familiar name in the country’s sports administration, credited, along with several like-minded politicians and social bigwigs running sports bodies, with pushing the country’s sports on the brink of a sustained disaster leave aside a few sports. And they did this largely by draining the coffers of the sports bodies they headed for private luxury. Those who were incapable of such an enterprise showed their prowess by investing their energies into more physical and fleshy aspect of sports, never mind the public shame that invariably accompanied the exposure of their escapades. Only the Board for Control of Cricket in India can be excluded from this category because it has single-handedly fashioned cricket’s fall from grace by plying the boys with stinking money only to see Team India set records after records in setting lowest scores ever in Test and One-Day history and going down to rivals with margins that cannot be measured in yards but in miles.

But why should the country make a song and dance about Kalmadi and his hand-picked coterie? How will his resignation help set things right when the Commonwealth Games are round the corner? In fact, there cannot be a more opportune time to tether Kalmadi to his acts of commissions and omissions. Now is the time to believe in him for all that he is claiming. Now is the time to repose one hundred percent faith in his leadership and enterprise. If the Games are pulled off without stadium lights going out just when the rivals in the boxing ring are taking rapid jabs at each other, without a tile out of place, without the players getting stuck in the traffic jams from the Games Village to the stadium, without rains playing havoc with Kalmadi, his men and the Delhi government’s cheeky efforts to give a leak-proof stadium all the punches and jabs being thrown at Team Kalmadi may actually boomerang. Public memory is time-tested and is clearly short. Post October 14 when the curtains fall down on the Commonwealth Games you can rest assured the former fighter pilot would have ejected to safety.

But that would be one lovely wishful thinking for Kalmadi. For in the deep recess of his mind he must be scheming ways to get out of the sordid mess because he knew he was sprinting close to that mess every time a stone was laid at expanding the stadium, every time a tile was imported for the rest rooms and the lobbies, when the state-of-the-art turf was being laid out and every time a certain plan was changed and redrawn to measure up to the most modern sporting facilities that lived up to the international standards. It is hard to digest Kalmadi’s ignorance about tenders and deals floating around him most of which he was personally privy to and he personally partook. The fabricated letter from the Indian High Commission in London recommending a certain firm for a contract was a clear giveaway of Team Kalmadi’s shenanigans. Kalmadi himself had a big foot in his mouth on news channels across the country.

Precisely why has even the party he has served over three decades distanced itself from him over the CWG controversies? But it is a case of too little too late. It is true that as elected president of the Indian Olympic Association and man in charge of CWG preparations Kalmadi is answerable only to the Commonwealth Games Federation in this case and not to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Yet it shall be a travesty of reason and logic to completely take away the blame from the party or the government for having allowed the mess to prosper at the cost of the nation’s pride and honour.

Whose credibility is at stake in this CWG anyway? Whose games are these? Kalmadi may just be Games CEO for all we know but at the end of the day it is India’s honour and credibility at stake. Can one man be allowed to play with the country’s confidence, pride and self-esteem? Can the government of the day wash its hands off the controversies and those that may dog the Games in the immediate future or post the conclusion of the event?  What if the standards at the Games venues and stadia were found suspect? What if the rains bring down a concrete slab over the excited and restive spectators? It shall also crush the country’s credibility and self-esteem beyond repair. And burdened with this heavyweight guilt we shall lose the moral right to bid for hosting the 2020 Olympics. Anyway, with tonnes of water-tight evidence the Olympics Committee shall be on a high moral ground to reject India’s bid.

You can question the chicaneries of a Kalmadi but the pragmatism of the Manmohan Singh government ably remote-controlled by 10  Janpath, the repository of political power in the country today, who also plays parent and guardian to several Congress MPs including Kalmadi, also becomes suspect. For much of his tenure after he was put in charge of the sports ministry M S Gill seemed fumbling for a role for himself when he should have been asserting his authority as minister. The grand old nanny of Delhi’s politics, chief minister Sheila Dikshit, appeared too clever by half as it gradually dawned upon her that after all she will have to meet project deadlines well before the onset of the Games. While the Gills, the Dikshits and the Kalmadis were busy playing seven stones with the Games not a leaf stirred at either South Block, 7 Race Course Road or 10 Janpath.

Enter Mike Fennel and the country wakes up to a disaster in waiting. The government agencies engaged in the Games work were caught off guard. As Fennel hopped and stepped over Games preparations he nearly jumped with anger at the tardy progress. That was a year ago. Kalmadi cut a sorry figure but put up a brave face and made incredulous assertions misleading public but gathering headlines nevertheless. That was the time the Manmohan Singh government should have appropriated the opportunity to take the Games command under its wings without giving the impression that Kalmadi’s wings have been clipped. It could have also saved Mani Shankar Aiyar the embarrassment of having to literally curse, in a fit of frustration and anger, a la sage Parashuram that the Games should be an utter disaster. Finally it dawned upon him that he was no longer the minister of sports and having lost the elections and now nominated to the Rajya Sabha shall never become one for a while and will have to cool his heels in the Upper House for long.

But who knows Mani’s unprecedented, off-the-cuff but pungent outburst may have just catapulted him into the big league of doomsday alarmists. Maybe he is the indigenous answer to the ‘occult powers’ Germany’s Octopus Paul possessed. Who will have the last laugh – Mani  or the Games mascot Shera? Shera the tiger is battered and bruised by a gang of poachers and in all likelihood might just be counting his last breath.

If the Games pull off well it shall be a triumph of corruption once again and India shall celebrate it on the streets of New Delhi. Corruption is one superbug Indians can claim to have lab-tested indigenously. The only difference being while the NDM-1 feeds on human lives the corruption superbug gnaws at the soul. This superbug and not the superbug British scientists are tom-toming having originated here should be the one named after the capital of the country of its origin.