ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether sport mega-events follow a top-down and neoliberal development logic that reflects the aspirations and material interests of the elites of their host countries while contributing to widening spatial, social, and environmental inequalities. To do so, it offers a comparative analysis of the 1982 Asian Games and the 2010 Commonwealth Games, both hosted in Delhi, India. Using the notion of competitive nationalism, it illustrates how the hosting of these two events proceeded from, and largely confirmed, an approach to development based on modernization and the need for India to ‘catch up’ to the so-called developed world. This approach resulted in not only a growth in inequality – in material, discursive, and spatial terms – but also a fundamental resistance to issues of environmental sustainability.
