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CHENNAI, India — India's Commonwealth Games, which are set to roll in New Delhi from Oct. 3, have turned into the nation's biggest shame. At a cost of $7.5 billion — excluding improvements and additions to city infrastructure — these will be the most expensive Commonwealth Games ever.

The cost — all laid to Indian taxpayers — has sky-rocketed because of terrible mismanagement and hugely inflated bills. Overnight, men in charge of the games have become stinking rich, and the event has helped to convert common wealth into personal wealth.

Scandalous reports of financial corruption, nepotism and incompetence have already tarnished India's image to a degree that appears beyond redemption. Sports stadiums are not yet ready, or if they are, there are growing fears of substandard materials having been used.

The roof of the weightlifting stadium, part of the main venue, began leaking hours after its inauguration.

The ceiling of the SP Mukherjee Swimming Complex came crashing down and a swimmer was injured.

Before that, a roof at the Yamuna Sports Complex collapsed.

The games village is not ready, nor are the living quarters for the hundreds of players due to descend on New Delhi.

The blame for all these rests squarely on the shoulders of Suresh Kalmadi, head of the Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth Games. He also happens to be a Congress member of Parliament, the party that heads India's coalition government.

Mihir Bose, a former BBC sports editor and a London-based writer and broadcaster, has been quoted as having said: "I do not understand how Kalmadi has come to acquire this position of influence in the Indian Commonwealth Games. He has no sporting credentials and he makes no international impression. The question is who is Kalmadi? Had it not been for the Commonwealth Games, would we have ever heard of him?"

The moot point is, why are Indians obsessed with politicians and have men like Kalmadi governing Indian sports? The answer is easy: Who governs has to do with class bias.

To quote Bose again: "In India, players tend to come from the lower classes, with the possible exception of cricket. They are not considered intelligent enough to run sports, never put in a position of power and always exploited by the babus and politicians. The politicians ride on the back of the athletes and use their success to acquire power and run sports in India."

The Congress party feels that Kalmadi must be seen as head of the games, not as a party representative. Worried about the stigma to the brand, the chief of the Commonwealth Games Federation, Mike Fennel, has asked for an inquiry into the allegations.

What is even more condemnable is the abdication of responsibility by Kalmadi and the government. Both have begun passing the buck: For now, it stops at a British firm that made the queen of England furious, as well as a couple of Australian firms. Last year the organizing committee hired a British firm to perform a games-related service for a hugely inflated sum of money. Kalmadi claimed that the firm was hired on the explicit advice of the Indian High Commissioner in London. It now appears that the e-mail shown as proof of such advice may have been forged.

The queen will not attend the sporting event — though for reasons other than corruption — and this will be the first time in the history of the games that she, the symbolic head of the Commonwealth, will be absent. Also, some star sportsmen will not participate.

Included in this scam of scams is vulgar spending. Over $200 was spent on every single roll of toilet paper bought for the games. Approximately, $13,000 was used to hire each thread-mill for two months, while seven or eight of the gadgets could have been purchased outright with this amount.

Over $130 was spent to hire an umbrella for the duration. An official justified this by saying it was of a special kind that withstands winds of very high velocity. But New Delhi is not on the Pacific Coast. Nor is it in a region frequented by cyclones. Where are the winds blowing from?

All this spending in a country where 76 percent of the 1.3 billion population live in abject poverty, with less than 40 cents a day to spend. Does the nation need the Commonwealth Games at all?