The prevailing uncertainty in the political scenario in this blessed land is causing several eyebrows to be raised. As things get murkier and murkier, one is tempted to talk about angling of all things, for cogent reasons mind you that one shall allude to in due course. Before one goes any further and ties oneself up in knots, why not delve a bit into the subject matter itself? Let’s begin by averring that angling evokes extreme reactions in people. The great Samuel Johnson defined the fishing rod as “a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other”. Izzak Walton, on the other extreme, said, “God never did make a more calm, quiet and innocent recreation than angling.” Somewhere in the middle would occur, George Parker’s definition of angling as “an innocent cruelty.”
Be that as it may, one has somehow not been able to apprehend the rationale behind the sport of angling. One has never quite managed to get worked up about invidious attempts to lure a poor miserable fish to swallow the hook at the end of the line; and then to call it sport to boot! Does that look like sporting, I put to you? Man’s yen to catch fish for food one can readily understand and appreciate. But the desire of angling for fun is way beyond one’s ken.
The reader would be quite justified in looking askance at this newborn interest in angling, especially when this does not even happen to be the angling season. (Is there such a thing as an angling season, by the way?). One has no hesitation in admitting that a plausible explanation is called for. So here goes.
What kindled one’s interest in the affair is the overwhelming fear that we in the Land of the Pure are all well on our way to becoming a nation of anglers. A horrifying thought that; but not as far fetched as the reader may be inclined to think. A word of explanation may be in order. The first thing the reader is advised to do is to avoid looking at angling in its restrictive sense. Its scope would need to be expanded to take it far afield. For all one knows, this may well have something to do with the “genius of our people” (remember?).
Permit one, then, to draw the attention of the perspicacious reader to those news items proliferating in the national media relating to the return home from another “successful” visit abroad of another (prodigal?) dignitary. Most top officials have made it so much of a habit to undertake a series of official visits abroad that it makes one wonder how they manage to squeeze in a few days to do whatever it is that they are supposed to do, while holding certain positions of authority in the government. One has merely to glance through the morning paper to discover at least a dozen items reporting our dignitaries departing for, returning from or in the midst of foreign trips, all undertaken at the hapless tax-payers’ expense. All this sets one to thinking, leading to startling but obvious conclusions. Angling for invitations and undertaking foreign trips has become the preferred national pastime. All-paid (out of the taxpayers money no doubt) foreign tours have become the end all-be all of our fellow nationals in responsible (?) positions.
Rather than the means to an end, the “foreign tour” has become an end in itself. It matters little if the work (such as it is) suffers or even that the tour in question defeats the very purpose it is supposed to accomplish. The “foreign tour” remains, without question, a consummation devoutly wished by our public (and bureaucratic) figures.
One reads a lot about the imperative need to append a precise definition to the phrase “good governance”, that is supposed to be the ultimate objective of all successful ruling elites. Our policy makers and implementers already appear to have arrived at the agreed definition. To go by the lexicon of our top leaders (and bureaucrats), it would appear that the “governance” is “good” if conducted by remote control from exotic venues abroad! The aforesaid may have conveyed the impression that angling for foreign trips is the only priority of our elites. Lest the reader go away with the impression that this is the only, or, indeed, the main fishing pond of our blessed anglers, One would hasten to clarify that this is not so and that the love of angling has permeated all fields. Angling for positions, permits and plots (to mention just a few) make up the mainstay of our political and administrative edifices. Gone are the days when service to God, country and the nation constituted the declared ambition of at least some of our public “servants”. Now each one angles for what he or she can get out of it. The concern is not for what one can do for the country but what one can do to the country and get away with. Our “public servants” spend a good part of their time and effort angling for postings where the pickings are good. Those miserable few, who continue to hold on to the shreds of principles they hold dear, are hounded from pillar to post until they or their principles give up the ghost, whichever comes first. It is a matter of some pity that those whose voices are the loudest in denunciation of such practices are also those foremost among the ones encouraging this regrettable trend.
Our elders and betters, when they are not dividing up loaves and fishes, keep themselves busy fishing in troubled waters, when they should rather be pouring oil on them. It has been argued that this is what troubled waters are meant for, but then who makes the waters “troubled” in the first place? Angling – Pakistan-style – spawns in a milieu in which established institutions are conspicuous by their absence. Ad hoc ism, that has permeated the system of the body politic like slow poison, is gnawing away at the very vitals of the State. It may be worthwhile for the powers-that-be to spare a thought for this malaise before it is too late.
— The writer is a former Ambassador and former
Assistant Secretary General of OIC.
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