Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt), Yuvraj Singh (vice-capt), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa, Suresh Raina, Pragyan Ojha, Irfan Pathan, Yusuf Pathan, Piyush Chawla, Ishant Sharma, RP Singh, Praveen Kumar, S. Sreesanth
This is the squad for the upcoming ODI series India will play. I haven't followed cricket like some of my more devoted friends, hence this isn't a view on what the team composition should have been. I just wanted to say that it sure feels odd to see a team without Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly.
Even the cricket team's changed, looks like I really have grown up (or older at least).
Friday, May 30, 2008
The Muck is Shining
'...A whirlwind road yatra by a Rahul Gandhi here, four days of campaigning by Sonia there, are no longer enough. Instead, each constituency has to be micro-managed, with an astute mix of caste calculations, local alliances, money power, rebel management and targeted campaign themes. In Karnataka, there were as many as 20 constituencies where the margin of defeat was less than 2,000 votes, sixteen of which the Congress lost. Four Congress rebels won their seats, while another ten got more than 10,000 votes. In a tightly fought election, these statistics suggest that the Congress was unable to handle the constituency level management which often makes all the difference between victory and defeat...'
These are the words of Rajdeep Sardesai on his blog here. It's an analysis on the whys and hows of the battle Congress lost in the recent Karnataka elections.
What surprises me is that nowhere in the whole article have good governance, welfare of the people, and in today’s scenario, other such archaic ideas been presented as the premise for winning an election. Instead all that has been talked about is how the calculations went wrong, how the management was better in the BJP camp, campaign themes etc. Sure these things matter as much, but to try and dissect a party’s electoral loss and another party’s win purely on the basis of what strategy they used and not once talk about how the incumbent fared while in power; how many roads were built, villages electrified and other such macro indicators, is to me a rude reminder of the reality of the muck that is Indian politics. Leave alone the macro indicators, not even a mention of whether one can hope for realization of the electoral manifestoes, or what kind of performance can one hope for from the candidates/ party in Congress’ case, is there.
Of course, the article is about Congress and its impending downfall, but surely governance, performance parameters of its leaders must also count for something when discussing a party’s future?
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