The enduring images of the Games will be not just the great sporting achievements - from US swimmer Michael Phelps' 28th Olympic medal to Usain Bolt's historic sprint 'triple triple' - but also the organizational problems, empty seats and crime.
With Beijing having had a profound rethink on India's admission as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the tectonic plates of the geopolitics of a massive swathe of the planet stretching from the Asia-Pacific to West Asia are dramatically shifting. That grating noise in the Central Asian steppes will be heard far and wide -- as far as North America, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.