PARTLY FACETIOUS: What about a ‘Lie Perception Index’?

“I have decided to launch my own survey company.”

“Hmmm.”

“Why the skepticism? I mean the work isn’t too difficult is it – take a sample of between 1000 and 3000 people representative of around 231 million Pakistanis…”

“You forgot one key word.”

“What?”

“Random.”

“In the Land of the Pure the concept of random does not exist.”

“I am not sure you understand the concept of a survey…”

“Hey stop right now. We are not a country where the concept of random, and I define it as hit-and-miss, exists, once we take aim we do not, I repeat do not aim to miss.”

“But…but…”

“Granted that there are some who reckon they still have a high precision sniper gun, while someone has surreptitiously placed dud bullets…”

“Or replaced it with a hand gun which is not that accurate right!”

“Hmmm, anyway going back to your setting up a survey company there are too many already in the world, in this country…”

“Yes but not a single one will survey what I intend to survey.”

“There is a corruption perception index, there is even a happiness index, there is…”

“The title of my survey will be Lie Perception Index.”

“And this will be in aid of? I mean a picture is worth a thousand words and the phone camera by the hapless Palestinians has eroded the Israeli-Biden narrative…”

“Ah that makes sense – the poor Sudanese have no access to smart phones so…”

“And we have access to smart phones but not to X.”

“Right but we still have means to access other social media outlets right. Anyway going back to my Lie Perception Index my first assignment is to determine who lies more. A politician seeking to retain power that he sees slipping away, a bureaucrat dedicated to perfecting the most appropriate output in public interactions though not in what he or she may believe are private conversations which can be dismissed later, you know he said she said kind of dismissal, or a moral leader who reckons any untruths he may tell are for the general good.”

“I don’t know where you are going with this, but I can smell danger, so am off.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024