Might as well. India needs to focus more on providing better nutrition to its population.
Can Formula One pull it off in India and should it be there at all?
F1 has arrived in India and the sport's organisers will be hoping to soak up the spare cash of India's middle classes. Photograph: Clive Mason/Getty Images
There are reasons why Formula One is, perhaps, not the most sensitive of sports. Its vast wealth, catwalk vanity and air of boffinish self-obsession certainly do not help. That is why the sport is unlikely to be troubled by those who question the morality of holding a Formula One race in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest regions in this heart-achingly poor land.
Is it viable, though? Can interest in this event be sustained during the five years of its contract? Ask those questions and the F1 deal-makers will prick up their ears. For when this noisy circus has travelled east, to South Korea and China for example, it has not been an overwhelming success. The future of the South Korea race is in doubt after two events and interest in China, which has been on the schedule since only 2004, is falling fast.
Boria Majumdar, a respected author and sports economist, has no doubts. "I think Formula One in India will be a great success," he says. "The upwardly middle class in this country is bigger than the population of many countries and I include Britain when I say that.
"And the upwardly middle class here have not been much affected by the recession. India has been relatively recession-proof. So Formula One is coming to India at a time when many people are grappling with questions of how to spend the money. This was waiting to happen in India and finally it has happened."
Majumdar, born in Kolkata, a Rhodes scholar and the author of Twenty-Two Yards to Freedom A Social History of Indian Cricket, added: "There is an oversaturation with cricket in this country and we made a mess of ourselves in front of the world with the Commonwealth Games.
"But if you don't tap into one of the world's fastest growing economies at a time of recession, you are making a mistake. You can ask plenty of social questions about whether this [is] relevant for India. That is a different argument and I have my doubts. But whether it is viable? The answer to that is yes."
The India GP has some obvious advantages over South Korea or China. It has been financed by private developers, rather than the government, which means its future will depend on the success of the event in generating the revenue required rather than being at the whim of a change in ruling party. India also has a foothold in the sport beyond hosting a grand prix; it has two drivers Karun Chandhok, who tests for Lotus, and Narain Karthikeyan, who will drive for HRT on Sunday and an Indian-backed team, Sahara Force India.
The communication company Airtel is the title sponsor of Sunday's grand prix, having ended its sponsorship of Champions League Twenty20 cricket, the sport that dominates advertising in India.
But Suhel Seth, one of the country's best-known marketing managers and the managing partner of Counselage India, is not so sure there is any guarantee of long-term success. "There will be a good crowd on Sunday and crowds will continue to come," he says. "But it is not sustainable. It's not going to enjoy the advertising that cricket enjoys. And where is the tourism, the infrastructure? I don't know what is going to attract the revenue that is needed. I think it will be a case of operation successful, patient dead."
Seth says the Indian Grand Prix does not show its people at their best. "In typical Indian style and this is where we have to be self-deprecatory in typical Indian style we have gone into this event at the last minute, with some dubious people involved, who no one really knows, and it is taking place in a state which is so corrupt, so it doesn't augur well. This is one of the three poorest areas in all India.
"And the irony is we're going to have high-speed racing cars in a state where, even today, 42% of the area doesn't have proper roads and where recently 459 children died of a strain of malaria."
But Seth is making a marketing, not a moral, judgment. In India only about 5% of the population belong to the middle class. Some 70-80% are poor, with half that number destitute.
But, Seth says, it is the crass and aggressive materialism of the middle class that has made them overreach themselves. These people stand out from the rest just as the opulence of nearby Delhi, the glory of Agra's Taj Mahal down the road and now the Buddh International Circuit stand out from the fetid streets of Uttar Pradesh.
"I'm not against this race taking place," Seth adds. "But I'm against the hypocrisy by which certain people believe we have arrived. We're being silly. We're only fooling ourselves. We're using the stadium of Formula One [as] a way of telling the world we have arrived. The Commonwealth Games were not only a PR disaster but also a fiscal disaster.
"The race hasn't happened yet, so we can't be too sceptical, and let's hope it goes off well. But while integrating sports, like cricket, bring people together, other sports are just spectacles where the people have no role to play, except give up their farmland, which is the case here. Here sport is a mockery, mocking the co-existence of poverty and wealth." And that, Seth argues, has marketing repercussions.
Formula One saw poverty at first hand at the circuit when four children appeared behind Renault's hospitality area. A Renault hostess, Adriana Maccarone, said: "A couple of truckies and myself went out and bought them some shoes, clothes and toys. We drew the shape of their feet on some A4 paper to get their shoe sizes. The whole cost came to between 10 and 15 pounds. They were so excited, even when we put ribbons in their hair. Force India and Williams, who are nearby, also gave them some goods and we gave them some chocolate and crisps from our hospitality area."
