[vmurthy]

A few things that stand out (not that it's that shocking!)

- Narratives matter -- a lot . Second order effects of such subjective rankings are real . Imagine getting a credit downgrade because someone perceives the democracy to be under threat

- "the government had reverse-engineered the ranking, strategically identifying procedural tweaks that directly boosted India’s scores in Delhi and Mumbai—the two cities evaluated by the World Bank" .

I love the whole cynical nature of this. This is statecraft at it's finest ( I render no moral judgements here :) ). This is reminiscent of Machiavelli or Kautilya (Chanakya) [0]

A lot more to digest but will post them as a reply on this thread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanakya

[whatshisface]

Statecraft at its finest? Next, I'll hear that KPI manipulation sets the standard for good engineering...

[labster]

I don’t know, I get the feeling Sir Humphrey would approve of this fine piece of statecraft (unless of course it was an adversary of Her Majesty’s government, in which case he would be appropriately concerned)

[vmurthy]

I agree re KPIs and engineering. But, statecraft is people. You’re not dealing with bits :)

[kaycey2022]

The real question is why did anyone even think KPIs were effective in the first place.

[Guthur]

Exactly, I'm sure Boeing and Intel both had KPIs coming out the walls but both have had major engineering issues recently.