“The needs of 21st century India were conspicuous by their absence in the blueprints of our planners.” So said a college student while debating on the ‘Perspectives of our leaders’. “Power shutdowns, traffic jams and overcrowded trains wouldn’t have been our lot if planners had had foresight,” she said. "Current leaders ought to introspect and plan ... ..."
‘Perspective’ literally means a ‘view ahead’ or a ‘vista’. ‘Per-’ is a Latin prefix meaning ‘through’, and ‘specere’ means ‘to see or to look’. A clear perspective would indicate a discernment of what lies ahead.
Artists call a 3-dimensional view of objects in a picture perspective. An amusing Chinese proverb says – “From the lowly perspective of a dog's eyes, everyone looks short!” That’s the canine perspective.
The simple Latin verb ‘specere’ gave the English language a few hundred words.
In the early part of this article are the words introspect and conspicuous – both derived from the same root: ‘specere’. The student I referred to in the first paragraph was conspicuously more perspicacious (= insightful) than the rest of the class.
‘Conspicuous’ has the synonyms – eminent, distinguished, prominent, commanding, signal, marked, obvious, distinct, pronounced, evident etc. If you were so popular as to be sorely missed at a party, you would be conspicuous by your absence!
Here are more words from the same Latin root – aspect, expect, inspect, introspect, prospect, retrospect, scope, species, specimen, spectacle, spectacular, speculate, spy, suspect . . ..
It’s interesting to see that the word ‘despise’ has the same root too. Its adjective despicable [from ‘de-’ (= down) + ‘specere’] means ‘deserve to be looked down upon’ – worthy of contempt.
All said and done, we must accept that we don't see a high standard of debate among our parliamentarians, and quite often even of behaviour. Is it because our schools and colleges have failed to inculcate good parliamentary discipline, and exemplary debating capabilities?
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