As Glasgow2026 gave the sporting world a clear look at how mega sporting events can be organised with the shortest of notices and tightest of budgets, thoughts wandered to the course Amdavad2030 chooses to take. When the CWG return to India, Amdavad2030 will mark a century of Commonwealth Games, which when first held in Hamilton, Canada were titled the British Empire Games.
A hundred years later how does Amdavad/ Ahmedabad – home to that Empire-slayer Mahatma Gandhi and his Sabarmati Ashram – interpret a sporting event that now houses a diverse, diffused bunch of nations? Surely Gandhian ideals of non-violence and sustainability – more resonant across our troubled world today – will be front and centre in Amdavad2030’s presentation of itself?
All we can do is keep guessing. For Indians, there is no way of knowing. As of today though, Amdavad2030 has no official website nor does it have a distinct Games logo. Given that the Consultancy Caliphs – PWC, EY, Populous, Deloitte and Burson – were involved in bid preparations and presentations around Amdavad2030 and the city’s bid for the 2036 Olympics, a Games road map or a slick city brand identity is the least expected. Or even a web page promising future excitement.
The bristling response to the lack of a website or logo would suggest that this is an echo of the spirit of the 2010 New Delhi CWG in terms of timelines. The New Delhi CWG logo was released in November 2007, three years before the Games began, and its website went active in January 2008. Don’t be such a grump, Amdavad 2030 has enough time. Let’s not forget however, that India’s digital ecosystem in the first decade of the 21st century is not the turbo-charged commercial and narrative-builder engine it is today.
Within months of Ahmedabad/ Amdavad being named as CWG2030 hosts, sports fans have launched their own websites. Bharat2030cwg.com calls itself ‘India’s biggest and first fan platform for CWG 2030.’ It has the (not yet formally announced) Amdavad2039 dates listed as October 15 to November 1.
Ahmedabad-based Anshu Anamika and her husband run the second website, indiacwg.com, which gets about 1500 hits per day. Its eventual aim is to grow into a fan-based portal which is the “first choice for users during 2030.” Both websites today offer news from Glasgow 2026, proudly counting down to CWG2030.
The actual Amdavad2030 ecosystem remains in the shadows. As of now there is no organising committee. No organising committee and therefore no head who can be held responsible, as indeed Suresh Kalmadi and Lalit Bhanot were post 2010, for any possible shenanigans, around infrastructure snafus, over-spending or personnel mismanagement. Which will occur.
All the media noise is around stadia being built and an operational budget figure which, not formally announced yet, was slotted in between ₹3000 (approx. US$310m) and ₹5000 crore (approx. US$520m) as compared to Glasgow’s budget of $180m.
Alongside the many photographs and architectural models of games venues there is a floating Games village – somewhere between the Sardar Patel Sports Enclave around the Modi Stadium or in another case, within a five km radius from the enclave alongside a second games village near the Gandhinagar cluster. No one is telling.
Technically, it is the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) headed by PT Usha which should be the point of contact for the CWG ruling body Commonwealth Sport (CS), the IOA that is under its allied title as Commonwealth Games Association of India (CGAI). People connected to sport in Gujarat, say that it is the Sports Authority of Gujarat, headquartered in Gandhinagar and the State Sports Youth and Cultural Activities department, headed by the sports minister and deputy chief minister Harsh Sanghavi are in fact in real charge. Any sports federations’ much fought-for “autonomy from government interference” has discreetly vacated its coop.
Email queries sent to SAG and the Gujarat State Sports Youth and Cultural Activities departments asking for information about budgets, timelines or games villages went unanswered. In its formal response, CS confirmed it was “working closely” with the CGAI and the governments of India and Gujarat. Regarding the absence of an organising committee, CS said the Host Collaboration Agreement (HCA) between CF and Amdavad2030 “requires the formation of an Organising Committee. This is in process of being finalised.”
In a possible portent, Gujarat deputy chief minister and Sports Minister, Harsh Sanghavi who is in Glasgow this week posted a picture on his Instagram wearing Games credentials with the words “Future OC Chair” under his name. While, no sporting mega-event can be organised without government support, usually the individual heading the OC has, regardless of their individual qualities, an easily identifiable connection to sport – either as a former athlete and/ or sporting administrator. The choice of a political OC Chair for a sporting mega event will mark yet another Indian first.
The HCA document is a confidential legal agreement which contains among other clauses, financial guarantees from a hosting city to CS. When asked about Amdavad2030 operational costs being cited around the $300m-500m mark, CS said the “principles” in the HCA “speak to a considerable reduction in the cost of hosting a Games.”
After Victoria pulled out of hosting the 2026 Games due to the financial burden it would place on taxpayers, CS moved towards a Games Reset Framework around October 2024. Part of the Games Reset Principles was the push towards creating “a sustainable Games” in which, “hosting costs will be reduced by at least 60% from the historic Commonwealth Games costs to diversify the hosting pipeline and enable more, new countries and regions to bid.”
Reduction of costs, “environmental sustainability targets” and “little or new capital infrastructure requirements” are fine words in Games Reset. Amdavad2030 must somehow find a way to balance hosting a sustainable Games, in step with global templates set by Paris2024 and Glasgow2026 and catering to the Indian politico-sporting instinct to put on a mega, capital-intensive show.
