Olympic Fever

The Olympic torch was lit two days ago in Athens as usual. This got me thinking about India's participation in the Games. Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to find out about India's participation in the Olympics this year.

Like millions of other people I went to my favourite site google.com and searched for Team India. After about half an hour's search all my enthusiasm wore down and was instead replaced by frustration and anger. Even after 30 minutes I was unable to find one proper site which listed the people who have been shortlisted to participate this year.

All I got was one lousy site which I believe is the official site for Indian Olympic team. For all eager Olympic followers the site is

http://www.olympic.ind.in/

I don't know where to start commenting about the site. Before that just go through the following two sites as well.

http://www.usoc.org

http://www.olympics.org.uk

Well let me start with the layout and format. This is probably the worst site designed ever for big government. Any 5th standard kid could have done a better job. Some links are broken and the whole look and feel is horrible, to say the least. They have given a number of external links which point to the official Olympic site for Beijing 2008, Commonwealth games, etc. If only the designer had taken some time off and visited these sites the design would have been much better.

Once I thought about my initial quest I forgot about the poor appearance of the site and decided to start the hunt for Team india. Alas I was up for more disappointment. The site had wonderful photos of all the committee members of the association but failed to even mention the members of the team. Not a single scrap of information about anything to do with the team that's supposed to go nor about the accomplishments of Indian athletes in previous Olympics.

Now I'm left wondering why no names are mentioned... Is it because no one is going? Have the old athletes been forgotten so fast? Is it because the committee members are so self absorved that the site is serving as a publicity portal for them? Who maintains these sites? Doesn't anyone bother to update them??

All this when India is supposed to be brimming with software professionals who are filled with talent. Can't the govt find just two people to bring the site to a decent shape and maintain it with constant updates???

I guess these are questions which will never be answered. Questions asked in vain...