Gobbledygook

Gobbledygook basically is pretentious unintelligible jargon.One can also call it double dutch.A bunch of baloney wrapped around in drivel topped up with more of macaronics and rigmarole. This blah-blah, hocus-pocus, chitter-chatter, jibber-jabber, mumbo-jumbo is hard to understand. See what i mean?

This uncharacteristic use of jargon is ideal to obfuscate data thereby making things deliberately unclear and might possibly give you a headache, if you read it over more than once. Comprehending it is another matter. Hence, its most easily found in corporate policy matters and even more or in government reports. It is the art of saying the simplest of things in the most twisted way possible, literally tying knots in a sentence.

Some samples of such government gobbledygooks are sampled below.Followed by their meaning in just one sentence. Can you decipher a gobbledygook?

Here is the first one.

It is clear that the Cabinet Committee agrees that the new policy is an excellent plan, in principle. But in view of the doubts being expressed, it was decided to record that ,after careful consideration, the considered view of the committee was that while they considered the proposal met with broad approval in principle, it was felt that some of the principles were sufficiently fundamental in principle, and some of the considerations so complex and finely balanced in practice that in principle it was proposed that the sensible and prudent practice would be to subject the proposal to more detailed consideration with and across the relevant departments with a view to preparing and proposing a more thorough and wide ranging proposal laying stress on the less controversial elements and giving consideration to the essential continuity of the new proposal with existing principles, to be presented for parliamentary considerations and public discussions on some more propitious juncture when the climate of opinion is deemed to be more amenable for consideration of the approach and the principle of the principle arguments which the proposal proposes and propounds for approval.

What does it mean ?

In precise,

The Cabinet is not in favour of the policy.

Page 127, Ji Mantriji, Vol 1

Now try this one.

Notwithstanding the fact that the proposal could conceivably encompass certain concomitant benefits of a marginal and peripheral relevance, there is a consideration of infinitely superior magnitude involving your personal complicity and corroborative malfeasance, with the consequence that the taint and stigma of your former association and diversions could irredeemably and irretrievably invalidate your position and culminate in public revelations and recriminations of a profoundly embarrassing and ultimately indefensible character.

In one short sentence,

If you let this proposal pass, prepare for a character assassination.

Page 155, Ji Mantriji, Vol 1

And one more.

Certain informal discussions have taken place, involving a full and frank exchange of views, out of which there arose a series of proposals which on examination prove to indicate certain promising lines of enquiry which when pursued led to the realisation that the alternative courses of action might infact, in certain circumstances, be susceptible of discreet modifications in one way or another, leading to a reappraisal of the original areas of difference and pointing a way to encouraging possibilities of significant compromise and co-operation which if bilaterally implemented with appropriate give and take on both sides could, if the climate were right have a reasonable possibility at the end of the day of leading ,rightly or wrongly to a  mutually satisfactory conclusion.

This simply means

We can make a compromise deal with them.

Page 103, Ji Mantriji, Vol 3

Ji Mantriji was an Indian adaptation of the British satirical sitcom Yes Minister aired on BBC. Ji Mantriji aired on Star Plus and featured Farooque Sheikh as Surya Prakash Singh, the minister of Administrative Affairs and Jayant Kriplani as the department’s secretary whose job was to bamboozle the minister with his trademark goobledygooks.

The examples have been taken from the book adaptation of the series ,Ji Mantriji: The diaries of Shri Surya Prakash Singh published by Penguin in 3 volumes.

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Star Plus cancelled Ji Mantriji because of low TRP's, despite it having a niche dedicated audience.