Ahead of Commonwealth Games, it's about slumdogs versus millionaires

The banners were erected at the little hillside enclave while everyone was at work, long blue and purple signs with a smiling cartoon tiger proclaiming the arrival of the Commonwealth Games.

By nightfall, the enclave was nowhere to be seen. The plastic-roofed shanties that are home to more than 200 people - labourers who have spent the last year fixing up the city's roads for the games - had disappeared behind the smiling tiger.

While poverty remains one of India's most intractable and enduring problems, officials don't want it to be what visitors to the games remember. Many of this city's beggars have been arrested or forced from the streets, migrants have been rousted, and thousands of homes hidden from sight.

New Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit denied the hundreds of banners put up around the city in recent days had anything to do with disguising poverty.

"It's to give the city a festive look," she told reporters on Monday.

Image: A migrant woman washes clothes behind a Commonwealth Games banner in New Delhi on Monday.

Text & Images courtesy: AP