RESEARCH

... India and the Games' apologists blame the victim — Indians — for not being nationalistic enough A n international games event is often hosted in a place with the aim to uplift the local economy. The Commonwealth Games has so far served this purpose well in several cities in various countries that hosted them (this event is strictly associated with the hosting city and not the hosting country). Prime among these examples is the 2002 chapter that was held in Manchester that was passing through its worst phase of unemployment, a fallout of the closure of hundreds of textile mills the city has historically been known for. The city received a considerable facelift as a result, and at least 20,000 jobs were created as a direct result of the infrastructure upgrade. The most prominent of the economic changes observed by the city because of the 2002 Commonwealth Games was Microsoft, the company that took charge of the cyber support for the event, making the city its European headquarter

_______________ Surajit Dasgupta _______________ Can Challenge 2009 find the missing notes? N a jAnE koI kaisI hai yeh zindagAnI ,’ sang Debojit Dutta from Kolkata so marvellously — albeit he was out of breath once, a point conveniently ignored by the judges — last night that the audience, going a step ahead of whistling hysterically, gave him a standing ovation to mark the end of the first episode of “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa – Challenge 2009”. The rendition of the rock song from the film, Gangster , was so enthralling that, much as I conceived this article last night when the programme was being aired, I can’t recall the names of other singers now. That does not mean, however, that the other contestants did not sing well. They did. And the judges — Himesh Reshammiya, Aadesh Srivastava, Shankar Mahadevan and Preetam — boasted ad nauseam , though not unjustifiably, how the contest was many notches above the competing, me-too programmes on other channels. That was the happy part. The causes