Big leap in the dark?

Reader question:

When a government plan is described as a “big leap in the dark”, what does it mean?

My comments:

Several points.

One, “big” suggests this is an ambitious plan. “Leap” suggests it’s a bold plan, as in the Great Leap Forward. “In the dark” suggests that it’s an uncertain plan, perhaps leading to unknown and even dangerous consequences.

It also implies, of course, that government officials who have formulated the plan don’t know what they’re doing.

But uncertainty about the unknown is the main point here.

Leap, you see, is a big step, a hop actually, as in leapfrog. For humans, if anyone takes a leap, it’s like they’re hopping about like a frog or a kangaroo or they’re running forward with a confident long stride.

But people don’t take big bold steps in the dark, and that’s the thing. In the dark, people move in small timorous steps instead and that’s as it should be. Take wanton big steps and you risk falling into a hole in the ground.

That’s the thing.

Hence, when a government plan is described as a “big leap in the dark”, it is, well, pretty risky.

It is my good hope that governments don’t do anything like that, making policies without knowing exactly what to expect.

Sometimes, indeed, one hopes governments do nothing. If they do nothing, you see, nothing will go wrong.

Yes, one sometimes looks around and sees the mess and hopes that governments don’t just do something. Just sit there. Okay.

Well, to be sure, the minute we sense they are just sitting there, doing nothing and collecting pay, we want them to do something. Don’t just sit there. Do something. Anything!

Ah, well, let’s just hope they don’t always take a leap in the dark and do something which turns out to be very stupid.

All right, here are media examples of “leaps in the dark”:

1. The Rev. William Walsh, the retired Bishop of Killaloe, which is the Clare diocese, has told the Irish Times that he has deep questions about the afterlife, celibacy and thought of leaving the priesthood to get married because of loneliness.

Walsh, now 75, speaking of his attraction to certain women stated “There would have been a very strong attraction there at times, certainly, and you would of course wonder, wouldn’t it be lovely to be married to that person, even to the extent of wondering whether I should leave the priesthood,” he says.

“Thankfully I don’t think I’ve ever exploited those sorts of loving relationships, which certainly have enriched my life.”

He says he had such thoughts more than once “More than one is all I’ll say. But nowadays what I’d see as part of the sacrifice of celibacy would be a degree of envy I’d feel when I see grandparents and how much new life and wonder and joy grandchildren bring to them. That would make you lonely at times.”

Walsh stated he struggled with basic faith at times. “I would have been struggling with faith itself. In some ways faith is a leap in the dark. There was never a doubt about the values which I believe Christ showed us – truth and compassion and forgiveness – but there would have been questions of how deep is your belief?”

- Retired Irish bishop questions celibacy, ban on marriage and afterlife, IrishCentral.com, November 08, 2010.

2. If Gandhi is the father of Indian nationhood, Nehru is the father of Indian democracy, Brown University Professor Ashutosh Varshney writes in his latest book Battles Half Won, India’s Improbable Democracy.

The book is an engaging insight into the triumphs, failures and survival of Indian democracy which Varshney calls ‘the institutionalised common sense of Indian politics.’

An alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former professor at Harvard, the Uttar Pradesh-born Varshney is a leading scholar on India.

On a recent visit to Mumbai, he spoke to Rediff.com’s Archana Masih about Jawaharlal Nehru’s remarkable, if not impeccable record, the need for Narendra Modi to redefine his relations with the Muslims and how India has moved beyond the riots era.

...

Do you believe the India that goes to the polls in April is a different India which went to the polls five years ago? What has changed? What has not changed? Is this an election that has never been before?

Of the 760 to 800 million voters, roughly 150 million will vote for the first time. That itself is very distinctive.

Secondly, if the urban middle class returns to voting, that will be another electoral novelty.

The middle classes voted vigorously in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and they propelled India’s freedom movement. But their disenchantment began with the rise of the OBCs in Indian politics.

I am not suggesting in any way that OBCs don’t have a middle class, but India’s middle is predominantly if not wholly upper caste; predominantly if not wholly Hindu; predominantly if not wholly urban.

The return of middle classes to electoral politics will not be a historic novelty, but a novelty for the last 20 odd years.

So 150 million new voters, the likely return of the middle class to electoral politics and a party which is going beyond the three-and-a-half master narratives of Indian politics: First, secularism which has been abused so much that that narrative has lost its appeal. Secondly, Hindu nationalism; Thirdly, justice for lower castes; regionalism as a semi fourth.

The AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) is breaking free of all these. It is obviously causing a great deal of excitement.

You can’t say that this is an election you haven’t seen ever, but this is a kind of election we have not seen in a long time.

What were the other elections that can be seen as a turning point?

India’s first election in 1952 is described as a ‘leap in the dark’ because no poor country of this size had ever practiced democracy.

Ballots went on camel backs to the farthest hamlets of Rajasthan and on boats to some of India’s islands.

The 1967 polls after Nehru were a new kind of election. 1977 was a turning point, so was 1998-99.

We shouldn’t say 2014 election will constitute a historic novelty, we should say it will constitute a novelty of recent times.

- ‘The Nehru family has produced no one like Nehru’, Rediff.com, January 24, 2014.

3. Marking just six months to ­polling day, Nicola Sturgeon has set out six reasons for voting Yes, including creating more jobs and opportunities for Scotland as well as protecting public services from “Westminster’s privatisation obsession”.

“The referendum is a choice between taking Scotland's future into Scotland’s hands or leaving our future in the hands of an out-of-touch Westminster establishment,” the Deputy First Minister says today.

Elsewhere, Alistair Darling has set out the pro-UK camp’s “positive campaign with a message of working together at its heart”.

“The history of the UK shows we are better and stronger when our four nations pool and share our resources by working together. The bailout of RBS is a good example of that.”

The Better Together leader today adds: “We can decide to keep the strength, stability and security of being part of the larger UK, with a stronger Scottish Parliament and the guarantee of more powers, or we can take a leap into the unknown with all the risks of separation.”

- SNP: we can still convert 40% of voters from Don't Know to Yes, HeraldScotland.com, March 18, 2014.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者张欣 中国日报网英语点津 编辑：陈丹妮）