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Paradox that tells the truth
A recent survey carried out to gauge the public's view of contemporary events involving politics and government has come up with startling results. The authors of the study, The Daily Star and the Asia Foundation, found that respondents from the sampled population gave the government high marks for performance in service delivery in the areas, such as, agriculture, power supply, public service and law and order. But when asked which party they think would
win in the next general election, they were not being equally positive about or supportive of the party in power. A majority (55%) said that it was the main opposition BNP that would win the election. The bad news for the ruling party is that less than half of these interviewees (22%) think AL will win. What's intriguing is that a huge majority (77%) of these respondents support the opposition's demand for a caretaker government to run the next election. The surprise does not end here. Of the section of the population so interviewed, a majority (47%) believe that, at the moment, the country is moving in the right direction, while 44% believe it is not.
How do we reconcile these mutually exclusive, sometimes clashing, opinions of the same group of people about recent politics in general and the government in particular?
The apparent dichotomies in public perception of things cannot also be attributed to any flaw in the design of the study's methodology. For it was framed in such a manner that it cancelled out any kind of bias that might have arisen from differences of the respondents along the lines of their gender, geographical location, profession, social class and rural-urban divide. It is worthwhile to note that the respondents represented all the age groups from 18 to 50
and above.
So how does one account for the apparent confusion in the public's expression, if not in their minds, about the recent events surrounding politics and government? The survey findings have also been described as a paradox in this paper's report on the study.
Call it a paradox. But what is paradoxical need not necessarily have to be untrue. Rather it implies that there must be some hidden, deeper, truth in the findings that is waiting to be elucidated.
When we ask a respondent from a rural agricultural background if he or she is happy with the diesel price and its availability to run water pumps to irrigate crop fields, or if the agricultural inputs like fertilisers or pesticides are cheap and are easy to get, he/she may give a positive response which is true to the prevailing situation. But it will be too early to jump to the conclusion that the sameinterviewee will also be wanting that the incumbent government should rule the country for another term.
When the respondent's attention is drawn to the broader subject of governance and politics, a whole range of other issues, that may not have been included in the questionnaire, but are affecting public life all the same, will also come under his/her review. Those may include the local MPs' record on honesty or otherwise in public dealings, local law and order situation, the incumbent government's handling of vital issues of national interests with the bigger neighbour, the issues affecting the common border with the neighbouring country, and other widely discussed recent incidents (for example, the government's bungling of the Padma bridge project with World Bank loan, the recent scams in the banking sector, and so on).
So, these issues may weigh in to influence the respondent's answer. Which is why, the response of the interviewee may not necessarily connect the question asked in a linear fashion. And this non-linearity of the questionanswer relationship has presented itself before us as a paradox. Like an exception proves the law, so does a paradox point at a greater truth. The task of the researcher is to incorporate it into his thought paradigm.
Common people are sensitive not only about issues of their immediate interests, but also equally so about larger issues of wider significance. So it should not surprise us if
they answer a question in its broader context, even though its (the question's) focus was narrower. One cannot, after all, bind the imagination of the responding public.
In fact, there is no question of any confusion in the respondents' mind. They were just expressing their instant feelings through their answers to the questions asked. And when we are talking about feeling, people can only express their honest feelings instantly. To be honest, it is falsehood, not truth, that needs some thinking before it is expressed. So people were neither confused, nor were they lying, they were just telling the truth. So it is our turn to come to terms with this fact of life by whatever name we may call it, paradox or what.
The writer Is Editor Science & Life, The Dally Star.