Witoubou Newmai
Knee-jerk reactions, not attempting to understand beyond through critical appraisal or lesson unlearned from to unfolding events is the archetype of a near comatose or insentient society. Undeniably ours is one society that waits for the ‘collapse of bridge’ to precede the ‘concerns’ of planners and policymakers. Unfortunately, more often than not, even those ‘concerns’ of the authorities do not level the degree of the collateral damage.
Consequently, what happens to a society when it limits itself only to knee-jerk response to situations whenever it is being confronted, while in the same time, it stubbornly continues to ignore the culture of planning or long-term policy-making?
The growing ineffectiveness in addressing the issues confronting our society today is attributed to our unyielding display of obduracy. To deny this state of mind and attitude would mean to be guilty of absurdity, and also to reduce the reach of our collective reasoning.
Today, the challenge before our society is to discard the mentality that the formulation of effective policymaking or planning provided by deeper and fuller materials to address the confronting issues is an abstract concern. We need to engage in study-touch while shunning rhetorical shows. Otherwise, this knee-jerk response will continue to distort our position and situation.
One irony has been that, we have the ability to doubt and question each other, and yet we fall short to engage ourselves in questioning absurdities around us. Instead, we continue to build auras around those elements that are the reasons for these absurdities. This is the tragedy.
Planning and policies should precede misfortunes and calamities, and not the other way round. Even the ‘other way round’ will be a big consolation. But here in our case, the response of the concerned authorities is limited only in providing petty relief packages, a measure necessary only for the short term.
Several months ago this column had called the attention of our society to the role of changing our collective attitude that is the aversion to planning or long-term policymaking based on well-founded materials. We need to recognize with the nerve of urgency that, our inability to stretch the ‘campaign’ beyond the sporadic and knee-jerk response has ruffled the atmosphere. We are only promoting melodrama and theatrics as long as we respond only to the ‘immediate’ and not willing to go beyond it with well-co-ordinated measures.
When the interests of powers-that-be are eating into our vitals, concerned men and women of our society cannot afford to be loath to extend it to the collective idea that the culture of planning is one remedy.
