When you say nothing at all

Q: What is the biggest challenge that sports in India has to overcome? 
A:  Lack of infrastructure and a change in the mindset of people. 

Q: What is the one reform that will help banks and financial institutions in India function smoothly? 
A: De-regulation. There are too many controls. 

Q: What are the major issues in the education system today? 
A: Lack of professionals trained to meet the actual needs of the sector.

Note that the answers for the three questions are inter-changeable, and would make perfect sense if we did so.

When I was in college, I used be really disillusioned with such suggestions from experts and practitioners. I hated what I thought were their usual bromides - innovation, collaboration, working together, all-inclusive solutions, holistic approaches blah blah. To me, they always seemed disinclined to take a stand or say something concrete. After every such speech or interview, I used to ask myself - Have I learnt anything new from this? The answer used to be an invariable NO. So, I stopped listening when they spoke, I used to automatically tune out. I decided not to read their interviews anymore (unless it contained facts).

To me, they sounded like the horoscope pages which print stuff like "The week ahead will be slightly disturbing. You should believe more in yourself and not take things so seriously. You should be careful with your spending and be more assertive".

Well, really !! This is equivalent to saying nothing. Almost everyone on earth will identify with something so loosely-worded and it will always sound like good advice in hindsight. Even my dog can do better, you dont have to be a fortune-teller to come up with stuff like this. Atleast, thats what I used to think.....

So anyway, coming back to what I was saying, the answers from so-called industry experts seemed as lame as these ambiguous insights from the horoscope tellers. And I held them in very low regard until very recently, until I found myself doing the same thing.

There is this socio-economico-political crisis in some districts of Karnataka that I have been covering for the past six months or so. I had interviewed most of the concerned stake-holders, seen the relevant records, had access to the related data and traced the developments. Therefore, I know most of what there is to know about the issue, which makes me a sort of an expert, given that not many people have too many insights into this.

When this problem was being discussed in blogs at work, I felt compelled to point out the biggest problem  as I saw it  -“The poor who are most affected due to the crisis, are not being involved in the negotiations. This should be corrected”.

Now really, did I have to do all that researching and all those field visits to be able to say this? Its only common sense that the people who are directly affected by anything should be involved in the decisions concerning it. The statement I made is even vaguer than the interviews quoted above.  It is like saying  power to the people, which has got to be the oldest glitterary ever. But to me, it made perfect sense, because in my opinion, no solution could ensue without that…This was the one reform that was needed…But if someone read my "informed opinion", they would think no more of me than what I thought of others.

It really got me thinking about how judgmental I had been. Maybe, their answers seem so over-arching to us because we view the problem from a very low perspective. After all, the more you know about something, the more strategic you are bound to get. And at a really high level, everything seems the sameJ

Though it is well-known that most people willfully say nothing, I should really stop dissing all of them so regardlessly.

Lesson learnt truly and well….