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An Indian police official shouts to keep photographers at a distance as former Indian badminton champion Prakash Padukone, center, holds the Queen's Baton during the baton rally for the Commonwealth Games as it reaches Bangalore, India, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010.Aijaz Rahi/The Associated Press

The lead organizers of next month's Commonwealth Games want to make one thing perfectly clear: New Delhi will host the best Games ever.

Except, contrary to earlier reports, they do not expect to surpass the Beijing Olympics. Nor will it be easy to beat the 2006 Games in Melbourne, Australia, which planners tried to emulate.

"We're trying to at least reach up to Melbourne standards, which is quite a task," said Suresh Kalmadi, chairman of the organizing committee, chuckling ruefully.

It was a rare moment of humility for the chief planner, who has otherwise remained boldly optimistic in the face of corruption scandals and missed deadlines. With only a month remaining before the opening ceremonies, polls have found a majority of city residents worrying that poor handling of the Games will hurt the country's reputation.

When India won the Games, defeating a bid from Hamilton, the project was envisioned as a showcase for the country's rising power, and a springboard for a future Olympic bid.

Now, the opposite seems likely. Local newspapers quoted Mr. Kalmadi last week saying the Games would rival the Olympic spectacle mounted by China, and the comment became one of the country's most widely circulated items on Twitter, as users mocked the gap between the chairman's ambitious words and the muddy scenes of unfinished construction around the city. One user tweeted: "Suresh Kalmadi is fast turning into public enemy number one." Some observers have already called for his resignation.

For a man facing such criticism, Mr. Kalmadi appeared relaxed and jovial at a meeting with foreign journalists Thursday. He brushed off the earlier comment about China as a misquote, saying he only suggested that the athletes village in Delhi would rival the one in Beijing. "It's a Commonwealth Games. How can it surpass an Olympics?" he said.

He also joked about the possibility of the lingering monsoon rains affecting the opening ceremonies in an uncovered stadium - "Plan B is raincoats," he said - and even made light of the heart-wrenching poverty that foreign guests will see on the streets.

When asked whether he would advise the athletes to offer money to the swarms of child beggars who linger at intersections, tapping on the car windows in search of a handout, Mr. Kalmadi shrugged. "I wouldn't advise it," he said, "because then they will get surrounded."

But the organizer turned serious when making his argument that the Games would be pulled off successfully, despite the problems.

"There is a feeling that a developing country can't do it," he said.

"We will show the world we can."

This runs against the consensus in India's media. A columnist in the Hindustan Times, a major daily, concluded last month: "I think we can all agree that there is little hope that the Commonwealth Games will be a global advertisement for India."

Mr. Kalmadi urged the foreign press corps not to pay attention to the onslaught of negative reports from local journalists, however. He asserted that more athletes will attend these Commonwealth Games than any previous such events, and argued that all venues are finished except for cosmetic touches. Organizers are taking precautions against the full range of threats, he said, from the closed-circuit television cameras watching for terrorists, to the teams of insecticide sprayers hunting mosquitoes that spread dengue fever.

Lalit Bhanot, secretary-general of the organizing committee, concluded: "We are fully geared up to have the best-ever Games."

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