The Madhavani-Amuru proposition is Machiavellian. The pity-language used in the proposition is mind boggling. Madhavani is offering or sacrificing to bring development to the people of Amuru the proposition goes. Yah right, seems so patronising and obscurantic.

Madhavani Group of Companies is a business that has sustained for multiple generations and will likely continue to do so for many more generations to come. Why is it not using business-language to make its case with the people of Amuru?

And here business-language does not refer to that which is currently deployed by politicians and civil servants in government whom Madhavani has entrusted with the task of speaking for it on the matter of its interests in Amuru. The kind of language, that is, that is blatantly insensitive to the human and constitutional rights of the people of Amuru and of the people of Uganda as a whole.

Patronising and demeaning the people of Amuru is counter-productive and does not make business sense. Particularly so, the tendency of Madhavani’s state agents to describe the people of Amuru as backward and blinkered for they cannot see and or want the so-called development that Madhavani and its collaborators who are plagued with a saviour-complex are concocting for Amuru and its people. Eish!

Let Madhavani get off its high horse that is draped with a saviour-complex and engage constructively with the people of Amuru, specifically and the people of Uganda, as whole. Let us hear directly from Madhavani what its business proposal is. Madhavani’s proposal, moreover, it should present, yes, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, using business-language.

Madhavani’s proposition for Amuru should at the very minimum provide the following information that will enable us to constructively engage with it and to make informed business decisions:

• Madhavani’s self-reflection of what has gone right or wrong with its operation in Busoga.
• How Madhavani is going to ensure it limits that which has gone wrong in Busoga from happening also in Amuru.
• How Madhavani is going to enhance its business model in order to ensure that the best practices – that which has gone right in Busoga – are replicated in Amuru to the maximum.
• The Madhavani win-win economic proposition for the people of Amuru.
• The Madhavani win-win environmental impact proposition for the people of Amuru.
• The Madhavani win-win social proposition for the people of Amuru.

Otherwise, the people of Amuru whose homelands and livelihoods are threatened by Madhavani’s development-brew that is packaged in pity-language and is delivered through state-sanctioned repressive and oppressive discourse are justified to deploy weapons of the week in order to counter that proposition.

And by the looks of it, the people of Amuru are currently wining the pity-war.