Front-stabbing mokita needs radical candour

Politics would do well to take a leaf out of the corporate lexicon once in a while. Several companies abroad have been trying to get their employees to drop semantics and traditional office decorum in favour of acidic plainspeak. This has led to the bandying of terms like ‘radical candour’ and the particularly succinct ‘mokita’ — a word used by the people of Papua New Guinea to allude to “the truth we all know but agree not to talk about”. That both terms have potential political applications is obvious.

And US President Donald Trump’s new communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s recentuse of a related term — front-stabbing — should remind political spokespeople in other nations too about their appropriateness in political discourse. The latter, of course, means taking critics head-on instead of resorting to euphemisms and allusions and the current Potus — no respecter of mokita —is nothing if not a front-stabber, prone to radical candour.

Not too many Indian politicians can claim to trump Potus on that trinity, but front-stabbing has increased apace in Indian politics as recent incidents bear out. However, the antitheses of radical candour — listed by Silicon Valley ‘CEO coach’ Kim Scott as ruinous empathy, manipulative insincerity and obnoxious aggression — coexist here as well. That mokita needs to be addressed.