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14.
TO CATCH AN INSIGHT.
FORGET THESIS, ANTITHESIS,
SYNTHESIS
If you’re looking for trouble, you came to the right place. If
you can’t solve it, you’re half of the problem! Last night, I
surfed to http://www.icrisat.org/Vision/chapter1.htm, and
while I was reading ‘ICRISAT’s Vision and Strategy to 2015,’ I
realized that the first chapter was showing me, in between
declarations of intentions, such things as affirmations of
complexities, headaches, quodlibets. No matter; I’ve never been
afraid of any intellectual thesis, antithesis, synthesis – except when I don’t understand it.
Science writing is exactly like that.
Translating: The farmer is poor, the soul is poor, the weather is bad, the harvest is few.
Then I had a brainstorm. So here’s MyLaundryList of problems besetting Eastern and Southern Africa from the
files of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). ICRISAT did it right; if you want
to solve a problem, first you have to define the problem. Theirs was an exercise in fertility. Now, let’s have ours. I’m
asking you to scan the list of difficulties and note that out of the chaos have come the new vision, mission and
strategy of ICRISAT. Can we come out with a different vision? We can. Will our vision be clearer? Now, that’s a
problem. Will our mission be possible? That’s another problem. Will our strategy be achievable? That has to be
worked out.
What’s the prize if you can unravel this, MyLaundryList? A broad smile on your face at the very least; a laugh
would be a bonus. A flash of intuition would be best.