Uma Bharti, India's Sports Minister, is rightly perturbed over the prospects for the national contingent when the country organises the Afro-Asian Games. It's a great honour although no other country wanted to hold these Games. However, our sports officials, in all honesty have informed the Minister that, at most, the Indian contingent can claim eight medals. That too, only if the hockey team, tennis duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, manage to participate given their other more pressing engagements.
We believe that this is the wrong approach. India should be allowed to decide on the events to be featured at the Games instead of the usual crap - hockey, football, athletics, swimming, et al. Get imaginative people! Hold games where our expertise is well established. And if there aren't any in existence, invent them. Here go our suggestions:
I. Poll Vault: Contestants would be given a set of ballot boxes and the aim of the competition would be to see which team managed to stuff these with spurious votes, the fastest. Extra points would also be awarded to teams that thwart rivals with apparatus such as dandas, lathis, countrymade pistols, knives, etc.
2. Surviving Red Tape: Again half-a-dozen contenders are selected. They are tasked with four basic objects - get a water connection, an electricity connection, a building certificate and a ration card. Two parameters will be weighted to select the winners - he who managed to get the permits in the least time and he who pays the least bribe in achieving that purpose.
3. Sabse Bada Babu: A sport that could complement Surviving Red Tape. Six bureaucrats working in municipal agencies will be shortlisted to participate. He who manages to gather together the largest sum in bribes while managing the least amount of work possible, wins. A graded system of scoring could award additional points for the number of cups of tea guzzled or selling an application form worth Rs I for Rs 1000. The winner gets promoted.
4. Foot Bawl: Another event closely related to Verbal Gymnastics. Here the contestants will be chosen on the basis of merit displayed in consistently putting their feet in their mouths and thereafter crying out that whatever they may have said had been a) taken out of context, b) misquoted, c) forged, d) the video manipulated.
5. BollyThon: The intent here is to see who can sit through the maximum number of Hindi films, screened consecutively, with Mohabattein or Daman counting as two. The last man sitting with his popcorn will be given the grand prize of admission to a five-star sanatorium.
6. Filelifting: Open to all peons of any Government department given their decades of experience in lugging mounds of files from one bureaucrat's office to that of another and back and forth and back….. The process is repeated several times over. The final leg of the event concludes as the files are consigned to storage from where they are never recovered.
7. The Crawl: The actual process of the transfer of the files where the ultimate objective is not in clearance of any pending proposal but in consigning it to storage from where it will never be recovered.
8. Passing The Buck: The 4x400m relay - in reverse. The contestants could be drawn from among the large and supremely talented pool of career bureaucrats. The traditional baton would be replaced with a Government file. The objective of the race is to pass the file backwards from the finishing line. The first team to return to square one would be the winner.
9. CM Rat Race: Five contenders for the post of the Chief Minister of any state, preferably from the same party, are kept locked in a State Guest House with access to a cellphone and a cheque book. Obviously, he who manages to corral the largest number of MLAs within the prescribed period wins. Given the prospect of hung assemblies, this game show could be unending. Ideally, to be located in Goa.
10. Super Neta: A select group of politicians will be chosen on the basis of their credentials based on the number of criminals charges they face, the number of times they've been jailed, the quantum of disproportionate income they possess, the degree of poll rigging they can accomplish, among others. He who proves the vilest of them all wins.

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