Open weekend thread

Right, off for the day. Open thread, folks — will check anything you leave in here, and respond if needed, sometime second half tomorrow when I get back online. Have a good weekend.

India vs Australia

When Ramesh Srivats and I were chatting over beer the other day, some questions about the team composition came up and Ramesh brought up two names: Rahane, and Harbhajan. The chat continued for another three hours after they turned the cameras off, and at some point the question of use of resources came up.

At what point in a league do you cut your losses and make changes? Ramesh’s point was that if changes had to be made, it should be for the game against Bangladesh, so there would be an opportunity to test the reserves out before what was clearly going to be a crunch game against Australia.

Didn’t happen. Or, as Ramesh put it:

Oh, FFS!

I know election speeches are about emotive appeals, but — really?

Electrifying news

A BJP press release dated January 31, 2016 listed a string of achievements of the Federal government, and stressed the importance of data, and of educating the public to the achievements of the government. The relevant clip:

It is necessary to show the statistics because in the Congress-led UPA-1 & UPA-2 regime, many of these indicators were moving in the opposite direction. Due to economic policies and reforms implemented by Modi government, not only have many indicators improved, but they have improved by large margins.

As statements go, this is unexceptional. It is necessary to monitor progress and to disseminate the results of governmental schemes — lack of transparency was one of the big issues with UPA-II. The problem begins, however, when the line between fact and propaganda is blurred.