Rio de Janeiro and the nation of Brazil wins the bid for the 2016 Olympics

A truly historical event for Brazil to win the most prestigious games that dates back centuries. I can almost feel the pride of the nation’s people for winning such a highly-competed bid. However all this fight for hosting an event of this magnitude demands a lot of effort, labour and infrastructure, which all the nations in the world seem to be investing in and taking stock of, not necessarily for conducting events of global-scale but just to fundamentally improve the nations communication networks.
Interestingly last week I had received a chain mail, an old one I’m sure, but one that seemed to have recorded the greatest of engineering feats across the globe. Disappointing would be an understatement for what I felt after skimming through the wonderful edifices that leading and even developing nations have added to their country’s landscape. From the tallest buildings to longest bridges the world around us seems to be on an expansion mode. Even India’s friendly neighbour Pakistan has added a beautiful and awe-inspiring mosque that has won the slot for the biggest in the world. Laudable I’m sure but it certainly would leave any Indian wondering what we’ve been up to all this while?
President Obama was quick to point in multiple occasions the engineering and knowledge might of the Indian sub-continent. We’ve undoubtedly managed to hold more than our fair share in terms of position, wealth, status, talent and well a lot of other things that makes it worthy of being mentioned by international leaders. But why as a nation that churns out more engineers in a year than any other country, not able to add one truly remarkable engineered structure to its landscape?
I’m more than sure this demands some serious thought. Why can’t construction companies draft plans to build something that is not only lucrative but also add more value to our national infrastructural strategies?
We comment and appreciate it when President Obama’s stimulus package strives to create more jobs while improving the already developed nation’s infrastructure but don’t seem to bother much about the deteriorating conditions of ours. Finding new opportunities for growth and evolvement is certainly a prerogative for all of us but then why not work towards finding opportunities that can not have a great impact on our lives but also add to the greater good of our nation?
After all we live here and improving things here can only be good for ourselves too, isn’t it?