COMMUNICATION IS A HELL OF A THING

Reading the Trinidad Express editorial of April 2 took me back to1947 and a Form V exercise in public speaking. The topic was CONDUCT. John T’s entire presentation was — “Conduct, sir? Conduct is a hell of a thing.” His nine-word speech had us all in stitches at the time. In the 73 years since I have come to realise that communication too is a ‘hell of a thing’.

The Express editor headlined the contribution “Food Security is a priority”. It suggested that Agriculture Minister Clarence Rambharat in responding to “the recent clarion call by agricultural economist Omardath Maharaj to prioritise food security as a matter of national urgency” — had shown a surprising — “lack of alacrity in seizing the unique opportunity presented by the pandemic to push the message about food security, at both the individual and national levels, to a population that has been generally complacent about the easy availability of food”.

Truth be told, Minister Rambharat did not express the view that food was not a priority. He described in very vivid terms what he saw as his urgent ministerial responsibility. To quote the Editorial  —  “Minister Rambharat said the Government’s priority was to ensure that Namdevco’s farmers’ markets and municipal markets remain open to allow farmers to sell their produce. “COVID-19 is still unfolding, and the Government’s immediate concern is the preservation of life and that includes the protection of both the local food supply and the importation of staples,”

 And, to the suggestion that his ministry could encourage kitchen gardening, his position was that it had been touted by every minister of agriculture since 1956 and was “just common sense.”

So what’s wrong with this picture?

Mr Omardath Maharaj is a well-known Agricultural Economist who with his associate Raul Bermudez has been waging apparently successfully, a national crusade for increasing food security by planting breadfruit trees. Minister Rambharat must be aware of this great example of “common sense”.

So what we have here seems to me, to be a classic example of the captain’s speech from the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke. “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate”. In other words, an unintentional miscommunication, a disease that afflicts many persons in high positions and especially politicians.

Unlike The Mighty Sparrow who sang about being “there in London to see with me eye” Princess Margaret’s wedding to a cameraman;

I wasn’t there to see with my eye

So I can only surmise

Ah don’t believe the Express lie

Ah sure it was the minister’s TONE that caused the surprise.

“In his 1971 book, Silent Messages, Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA and influential researcher in the field of nonverbal communication, says that if there is a mismatch between a speaker’s words and the tone of their voice, most of the time, people will trust what they sense in the tone over the actual words. This means that one’s tone has the power to shut down communication, trust, confidence, agreement, and possibilities.”

I don’t know Minister Rambharat. Our paths crossed twice. The last occasion was a chance meeting at a Carnival 2020 Calypso show when he joked that we were wearing similar loud shirts. It was a less stressful time. Now “the Government’s immediate concern is the preservation of life”.

I, therefore, join with the Express to “urge Minister Rambharat to rethink his position and seize the opportunity of the global pandemic to get public buy-in to a national policy geared to food self-sufficiency”. A public expression of support for Mr  Omardath’s breadfruit crusade would help to restore possibilities.

And looking into the future after the Covid-19 pandemic goes away, I urge Minister Rambharat to include on his to-do list, taking a closer look at the local food distribution system, especially the municipal markets.  Some are dead, some are dying, and on life support as consumer buying habits and seller innovations have emerged and disrupted the market-place.

Ends.