How India Made Its Grand Prix Dream Come True

Vivek Prakash/Reuters

Red Bull Formula One driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany driving out of the pit lane during the first practice session of the Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, on Friday.

The Indian Grand Prix, which is running for the second year this weekend in Greater Noida, outside New Delhi, was one of the Formula One races that it had once seemed would never happen, could never happen - and then not only did it happen, but when it did it wowed the world.

Workers cleaning the track, which was dusty last year,  for the second Indian Grand Prix.

After Formula One came to China with its race outside Shanghai in 2004, there remained no market in Asia more important for the elite racing series to break into than India. With a population of 1.2 billion and a growing middle class, the powerhouse on the subcontinent was a vast and potentially lucrative market for the series and its sponsors. Moreover, India even had a small auto-racing tradition of its own.

The British had started running rally races in the country in the 1920s, and there were Indian single-seater series. But most racing had not taken place on permanent, Formula One-style racetracks, of which there were only two in India, in Chennai and in Coimbatore, and neither was even close to meeting Formula One standards.

Formula One races had begun to be televised in India regularly in the 1990s, and the Kingfisher beer and airline company, owned by the racing fan Vijay Mallya, had been sponsoring teams since the 1990s.

Mallya then went on from sponsorship into team ownership, creating the Force India team in 2008.

“It has always been my dream to bring Formula One to India,” Mallya said when introducing the new team's car that year. “The government of Delhi I think really wants Formula One in India and I am optimistic that maybe we will be able to host our first race in 2009.”

There had been Indian drivers in the series. Narain Karthikeyan raced with the Jordan team in 2005 and was a test driver at the Williams team for a couple of seasons after that. This year he is driving for the HRT team. Karun Chandhok started racing in the series at the new Hispania team in 2010 and also drove for Lotus in 2011.

Indeed, all that was missing was an Indian Grand Prix. Mallya and Chandhok's father, Vicky, had been pushing for one for years, via the Indian auto-racing organization.

But in the modern version of Formula One that was expanding around the world, virtually all of the new races had come about thanks to funding by local governments. In India, where poverty levels and need for development are a priority despite the booming economy, government support of a car race was not a priority, although the government did show some interest.

The tale of trying to hold the Grand Prix is indeed a long and convoluted one. As early as 1997, there had been talk of holding a race in Calcutta. But by 2003, the idea shifted to holding it near Bangalore airport. At the same time, the chief minister of the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh had set aside land to build the circuit near the airport at Hyderabad, and then a seven-year agreement was signed to hold the race elsewhere outside Hyderabad, starting in 2007.

Then, early in 2004, Mumbai began to show interest, and it was decided that the race would take place either there or in Hyderabad. By the end of that year, however, the deal fell through as the government changed its mind about spending money on racing.

By 2007, five sites around the country were being considered. In the end, Formula One signed a deal for the race with the Indian Olympic Association. It was decided to build the circuit in Greater Noida, outside New Delhi, with funding entirely from the private sector.

Even then, it looked as if the race would never really happen. The Grand Prix was announced for 2009, then 2010, and finally 2011.

Given this tumultuous history, but also because of the widely criticized organization of the Commonwealth Games staged in New Delhi in 2010, skeptics around the world wondered if India was capable of hosting an international sporting event of such magnitude.

Then, racing against time and employing thousands of workers - many of whom lived in tents at the circuit site - the Indians managed to build one of the world's great sporting stadiums, the Buddh International Circuit, with a gargantuan, curved awning overhanging the 13,000 seats in the grandstand of the main straight and a world-class pit and paddock area. The organizers had fulfilled their commitment to Formula One to perfection.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 27, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.

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Newswallah: Bharat Edition

Jammu and Kashmir: Beekeeping is picking up in the state after years of decline, The Indian Express reported. Honey output has jumped from 300 tons to 597 tons since 2010, according to the article. Apiculture is creating job opportunities, state officials said.

Assam: At least six people died and several others were injured in traffic accidents in the state during the five-day Durga Puja festivities, and residents clashed with police after one of the deaths, The Pioneer reported. A curfew was imposed in the Dhubri region on Wednesday, the last day of the celebrations, as a precautionary measure after a stabbing was reported.

West Bengal: Two government-supported girls' schools in the Nadia district have had no students on their rolls for three years, but teachers and other staff members have continued to receive salaries, The Indian Express reported. The article said the schools' 14 teachers “mostly while away their time by read ing newspapers, magazines and plain gossiping.”

Bihar: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been invited to Pakistan next month, Business Standard reported. Pakistan's high commissioner in India, Salman Bashir, recently visited the state and lauded Mr. Kumar's efforts at developing the state, but not everyone in Bihar would agree with him, the analytical piece says.

Rajasthan: Rajasthan's State Human Rights Commission is scrutinizing khap panchayats, the unelected, caste-based village councils that have recently drawn attention over comments made about rape cases in neighboring Haryana, Daily Bhaskar reported. The panel plans to recommend legislation dealing with the unelected bodies.

Tamil Nadu: A nongovernmental organization, Action Aid, says that only 12 of the state's 25 homeless shelters are functional, according to The New Indian Express. Supreme Court guidelines say that a state Tamil Nadu's size should have 123 homeless shelters, the newspaper noted.< /p>

Bangalore\'s Female Trash Pickers

Courtesy of Sonia FaleiroShobha, a garbage collector at her home in Bangalore, Karnataka.

New rules that require Bangalore's residents to sort their garbage aim to reduce inefficiencies in a system that has the city teeming with open dumps. The dumps attract cows, stray dogs and rats, and are a surprising sight in a city that prides itself as the Silicon Valley of India.

But an investigation into the work-life conditions of the 14,000 garbage collectors, or pourakarmikas, responsible for cleaning up an estimated 3,000 tons of garbage daily, offer an insight into why this task is a difficult one. It suggests that unless the lives of the pouraka rmikas improve, neither will the city's sanitation.

Shobha, 25, who goes by one name, is a widow who supports her elderly mother and her two children on a salary of 5,000 rupees ($96) a month. The family lives in a tiny room in a Cox Town slum. Shobha owns exactly two pieces of furniture: chairs foraged from the very garbage dump she visits, stuffed with the garbage she's handed most often-paper and plastic bags.

Shobha is clearly poor. But her circumstances are made more acute by the fact that her profession is despised and deemed fit only for people of the so-called low castes. She's a Dalit, as are most of the city's pourakarmikas. And like her, they're illiterate, unskilled and chose garbage collection because their parents were pourakarmikas too. Many feel they're equated with and treated like the garbage they collect. “I tried to explain the new rules to one housewife,” said Shobha. “She replied, ‘You're no one to talk to me.' Then she flung a bottle at my head.”

The impact of Shobha's poverty on her physical wellbeing is clear. The impact on her job is clear too. She signs in for an eight-hour shift at 6:30 a.m. But long before that she joins a queue of people to draw water from a public tap. She could hardly have slept well the previous night - her room doesn't have electricity, so to keep from stifling, she leaves the door open. Fear of intruders keeps her awake. During the monsoon, rain sweeps in.

By the time she reaches work, Shobha is tired and often filled with hopelessness. But she's responsible for manually cleaning approximately 1.5 kilometers (almost 1 mile) of road and collecting garbage from about 500 households.

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (B.B.M.P.), or municipal corporation responsible for the city's civic governance, has only 2,000 pourakarmikas on its rolls. These “permanent” workers, as they're known, are protected by labor laws. But si nce the 1990s the B.B.M.P. has hired only temporary pourakarmikas through contractors, and so the majority of pourakarmikas like Shobha aren't covered under labor laws. They're paid irregularly, cannot comfortably afford basic amenities, and are even expected to acquire their work tools.

Shobha goes through four brooms a month, at a personal expense of 160 rupees. To save money, she scoops up trash with pieces of metal, cardboard or Styrofoam, which, like the containers into which she haphazardly empties waste, are foraged from the dump. If she can't find a container, she uses plastic bags.

Even permanent pourakarmikas are only given thin gloves to wear, but Shobha must handle all sorts of waste - wet, dry, and hazardous - with her bare hands. On her feet she wears the sort of slippers most people would consider too flimsy to venture outside with. In these she tramps down roads and wades ankle deep into dumps wet with animal excrement.

The B.B.M.P. does pro vide temporary pourakarmikas with a uniform, a green cotton jacket they're expected to slip over their salwar kameez or sari. But they get just one jacket every five years or so. They're also given a metal cart for their garbage containers. A cart could be broken on all sides, but as long as its wheels move, it's considered usable.

So far this year, according to one news report, the B.B.M.P. has collected 250 million rupees from Bangalore's residents in garbage taxes. And this summer it earmarked 320 crore, or 3.2 billion rupees for solid waste management. Its ambitious plans to recycle and compost garbage include a proposed purchase of 200 acres of land to process waste, new garbage collection centers and new contracts with villages earmarked as dumping grounds.

But even with all the money the city has made, there are no new plans for the people who will, on its behalf, make first contact with the garbage. Far from modernizing its collection system, the city do esn't even plan to expand it. About 14,000 people will continue to clean up after 8.5 million with their hands.

In fact, despite numerous public statements by B.B.M.P. officials describing the pourakarmikas' enlarged role under the new rules, half a dozen garbage collectors interviewed for this story weren't even aware of the changes.

Rani, 33, a pourakarmika from Fraser Town who goes by one name, said it was a housewife who explained them to her. “She handed me three separate bags of waste,” said Rani. “Which was nice of her. But I don't even have one container. So I emptied all three bags straight into my cart.”

Dr. C. Suresh, a B.B.M.P. health officer, said that he doesn't expect real change in Bangalore's garbage disposal and collection habits for another two or three months. But he may have to wait longer than that.

Largely as a result of the B.B.M.P.'s own lack of foresight, the city's pourakarmikas are ill-equipped to handle their work and unlikely to do so successfully. S. Balan, who heads the only registered union of pourakarmikas in Bangalore, rolls his eyes at the irony. “Everyone wants a clean city,” he said. “But the cleanliness and well-being of the cleaners is of concern to nobody.”

Sonia Faleiro is the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars. Read more of her work at www.soniafaleiro.com. She will be appearing in Pop-Up Magazine on Nov. 8 at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco.