A number of concerns and controversies surfaced before the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India, which received widespread media coverage both in India (the host nation) and the rest of the world.

The Commonwealth Games was severely criticised by several prominent Indian politicians and social activists because millions of dollars have been spent on the sporting event despite the fact that India has one of the world's largest concentration of poor people. Additionally, several other problems related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games have been highlighted by Indian investigative agencies and media outlets; these include – serious corruption by officials of the Games.

Socio-economic impact

Financial costs

Miloon Kothari, a leading Indian expert on socio-economic development, remarked that the 2010 Commonwealth Games will create "a negative financial legacy for the country" and asked "when one in three Indians lives below the poverty line and 40% of the hungry live in India, when 46% of India's children and 55% of women are malnourished, does spending billions of dollars on a 12-day sports event build national pride or is it a matter of national shame?"

One of the outspoken critics of the Games was Mani Shankar Aiyar, former Indian Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports. In April 2007, Aiyar commented that the Games are "irrelevant to the common man" and criticized the Indian government for sanctioning billions of dollars for the Games even though India requires massive investment in social development programs. In July 2010, he remarked that he would be "unhappy if the Commonwealth Games are successful".

Azim Premji called the 2010 Commonwealth Games a "drainage of the public funds" and said that hosting the high-expense Games in India is not justified given that the country had more important priorities facing it, such as education, infrastructure and public health.

Social and environmental impact

Nearly 400,000 people from three large slum clusters in Delhi have been relocated since 2004. Gautam Bhan, an Indian urban planner and researcher working in the University of California-Berkeley, said that the 2010 Commonwealth Games have resulted in "an unprecedented increase in the degree, frequency and scale of indiscriminate evictions without proper resettlement. We haven’t seen these levels of evictions in the last five years since the Indian Emergency".

In response to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed for study and statements by civil society groups, a report by the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) - an arm of the Habitat International Coalition - detailed the social and environmental consequences of the event.The Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN),"The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Whose Wealth, Whose Commons?" It stated that no tolerance zones for beggars are enforced in Delhi, and the city has arbitrarily arrested homeless citizens under the "Bombay Prevention of Begging Act 1959".

Labour laws violations Campaigners in India have accused the organisers of enormous and systematic violations of labour laws at construction sites. Human Rights Law Network reports that independent investigations have discovered more than 70 cases where workers have died in accidents at construction sites since work began.Biswas, Soutik (22 March 2010). A Commonwealth shame?. BBC. Retrieved on 31 March 2010. Although official numbers have not been released, it is estimated that over 415,000 contract daily wage workers are working on Games projects. Unskilled workers are paid to per day while skilled workers are paid to INR per day for eight hours of work. Workers also state that they are paid to for 12 hours of work (eight hours plus four hours of overtime). Both these wages contravene the stipulated Delhi state minimum wage of for eight hours of work. Nearly 50 construction workers have died in the past two years while employed on Games projects.

These represent violations of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948; Interstate Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Condition of Services) Act 1979, and the constitutionally enshrined fundamental rights per the 1982 Supreme Court of India judgement on Asiad workers. The public have been banned from the camps where workers live and work – a situation which human rights campaigners say prevents the garnering of information regarding labour conditions and number of workers.

There have been documented instances of the presence of young children at hazardous construction sites, due to a lack of child care facilities for women workers living and working in the labour camp style work sites. Furthermore, workers on the site of the main Commonwealth stadium have reportedly been issued with hard hats, yet most work in open-toed sandals and live in cramped tin tenements in which illnesses are rife. The High Court of Delhi is presently hearing a public interest petition relating to employers not paying employees for overtime and it has appointed a four-member committee to submit a report on the alleged violations of workers rights.

During the construction of the Games Village, there was controversy over financial mismanagement,Emaar-MGF gets Rs 700 cr Games bailout. Business-standard.com. Retrieved on 6 July 2010. profiteering by the Delhi Development Authority and private real estate companies,Games booster for realty market? . Hindustan Times (7 October 2008). Retrieved on 6 July 2010. and inhumane working conditions.Meningitis strikes Commonwealth Games Village. Thaindian.com (4 March 2008). Retrieved on 6 July 2010.

Child labour CNN India discovered evidence of children, as young as seven, being used in the construction of the game's infrastructures. According to Siddharth Kara, who provided CNN with the evidence, he documented 14 cases of child labor within a few days. In reply to a question whether it could have been just a case of kids being present at the construction site along with their parents, he replied: "It's not just kids playing in the dirt or using a hammer as a toy." He further stated about the kids: "They're told to do the work and they just do the work. They don't know that they should be in school or that they should be playing."

Even though the New Delhi then chief minister Sheila Dikshit claimed that nobody had approached her, according to CNN, they had tried to contact her as far back as 23 July 2010. In spite of repeated attempts, according to them, no official reply was ever made.

Urban changes

Amita Baviskar, a professor of sociology from the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi argues that mega-events, like the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, are used to advance narrow agendas of urban reform that cater to the middle and rich class. She focuses on how, in preparation for the Commonwealth Games, the city's slums were bulldozed in order to make room for shopping malls and expensive real estate.

Sex slavery and prostitution boom There has been a boom in the number of young girls, mostly from impoverished parts of India, coming to Delhi after being offered jobs by disguised criminals, only to be taken prisoner and forced into sex slavery. The number of victims is believed to be in the hundreds. Many brothels have been running English courses for sex workers and upgrading their facilities in anticipation of a business upturn during the games.Hodge, Amanda. "Girls lured to games for work being sold to brothels". The Australian. p. 1. 30 September 2010. The local government also expected that thousands of prostitutes from other countries would come to Delhi disguised as tourists and practice their profession discreetly during the Games. One anti-trafficking NGO has claimed that there are reports of 40,000 women being brought in from northeastern India alone. A spokesperson said that recruits from that part of India were favoured because of their lighter skin. It has been reported that over 3,000 bar girls in Mumbai disappeared; some local sources blamed on an exodus to Delhi in a focus for the Commonwealth Games.

Organisational failure

Vigilance-related irregularities and over-invoicing On 28 July 2010, the Central Vigilance Commission, an Indian government body created to address governmental corruption, released a series of reports and documents showing the irregularities in 14 CWG projects. As per official reports, in total 129 works in 71 organisations have been inspected.Clarification–regarding inspection of works relating to Common Wealth Games., report issued by CVC. Download pdf The detailed preliminary findings included the award of work contracts at higher prices, poor quality assurance and management, and work contracts awarded to ineligible agencies.INSPECTION OF WORKS RELATED TO COMMON WEALTH GAMES, report by the CVC, Download PDF

There are also allegations of widespread corruption in various aspects of organising the games including procurement and awarding contracts for constructing the games infrastructures. The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee on 5 August 2010 suspended joint directors T S Darbari and M Jayachandran following the reports of the three-member panel which was probing the financial irregularities related to the Queen's Baton Relay.

During the audit process, the Organising Committee treasurer Anil Khanna resigned from the post in the wake of allegations that his son's firm had secured a contract for laying the tennis courts. The GlobalPost news agency reports that scandals have come to light, such as "shadowy off-shore firms, forged emails, inexplicable payments to bogus companies and inflated bills – for every purchase from toilet paper to treadmills." Among the alleged corruption and defrauding of the games budget, toilet paper rolls valued at $2 were costed at $80, $2 soap dispensers at $60, $98 mirrors at $220, $11,830 altitude training simulators at $250,190.

Delays in the works In September 2009, CGF chief Mike Fennell reported that the games were at risk of falling behind schedule and that it was "reasonable to conclude that the current situation poses a serious risk to the Commonwealth Games in 2010". A report by the Indian Government released several months prior found that construction work on 13 out of the 19 sports venues was very low and behind schedule.

The secretary-general of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) Randhir Singh has also expressed his concerns regarding the current state of affairs. Singh has called for the revamp of the Organising Committee commenting that India now has to "retrieve the games". Other Indian officials have also expressed dismay at the ongoing delays but they have stated that they are confident that India will successfully host the games and do so on time.

As the Times of India reports, all CWG projects were to be completed by May 2009 and until the Games they had to be available for the trial events. The newspaper further reports that the first stadium was handed over for trial runs in July 2010, three months before the Games. To put the delays in perspective, Beijing National Stadium was completed in 2006, two years before the 2008 Summer Olympics, while the venues for 2012 Summer Olympics in London are scheduled to be delivered one year before the games and the construction of the venues were a very behind of the schedule.

In August 2010, the Cabinet Secretariat took a decision to appoint 10 officers of the rank of Joint and Additional Secretaries to oversee the progress of the construction of the venues. Each officer is allocated to a venue and given the responsibility to ensure that the work completes in time for the games.

Mass volunteer walkouts Around 10,000 of the 22,000 selected volunteers quit, less than a week before the event. This has been blamed on a lack of training for personnel, or dissatisfaction with assignments. Australian media reported that a large portion of this group did not even return their uniforms as a form of protest.

Poor ticket sales and attendance