BollyWorld to Pahle India

AVUCA world, which is management jargon for describing a world with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, requires appropriate ways of planning. The numbers of ‘known knowns’, about which forecasters and planners can have reliable quantitative data, are exceeded by ‘unknown unknowns’. Even by many known unknowns, such as political uncertainties within countries and geopolitics, and whether and when climate change will be harnessed to reduce the uncertainty of catastrophic weather events.

India should promote participative solutions developed by people themselves, for their own places, to all countries in the G20 it hosts for a year.

The history of economic forecasting reveals that more than half of the economic forecasts made by the most relied on forecasters in the last century were proven wrong. Yet, forecasts of India’s and the world’s economic growth continue to grab headlines. This week, the World Bank revised India’s growth forecast even for the current financial year, about which a lot more can be known than about the following years! How long can one continue to rely on economists’ forecasts to make long-term policies and strategies? Is there a better way to see through the fog of uncertainty and steer the ship of the state and all within it?

A systems thinking-based scenario planning is a better way to steer through uncertainty. It factors in all sources of uncertainty in a system, even unquantifiable ones. It provides a map with broad outlines of features in the landscape, though not the details, and a compass to steer the ship. The foundational discipline of scenario planning, which distinguishes it from conventional forecasting and planning, is ‘systems thinking’.

Systems thinking focuses on understanding the relationships among a system’s components. Scenario planning does not begin with the data. It starts with listening to diverse points of view about what is going on within a complex system to understand the under-currents that will surface and disrupt predictions of economists’ models. Scenarios depict the shapes a country’s economy may take in the future depending on changes in social and political conditions with economic growth. Systems’ scenarios include subjective perceptions of poverty and inequality, also mistrust in institutions of governance, which are ‘externalities’ to quantitative models.

A 2005 World Economic Forum report, prepared jointly with the Confederation of Indian Industry — ‘India and the World: Scenarios to 2025’ — projected three scenarios for India’s future, depending on its economic trajectory. India was in an ‘India Shining’ mood at that time, celebrated as ‘the world’s fastest growing free market democracy’ to tempt western investors away from China’s even faster growing economy.

The first scenario looked deeper within India’s current reality in 2004. Labelled ‘BollyWorld’, it revealed forces which would dampen growth if not responded to in good time. The opening of India’s economy had created more opportunities for private enterprises and rapid increases in the wealth of the top 1%. Millionaires were multiplying. The imported cars they owned, expensive clothes they wore, and champagne they drank were celebrated by the media. While entrepreneurial spirits were unleashed and young people aspired to become wealthy, signs of their increasing frustration were also visible. Violence was not restricted to rural, Naxal areas; petty urban crimes, many violent, were increasing.

The second scenario was called ‘Atakta Bharat’ (Stuttering India). It showed how increasing inequality and insecurity could compel the government to impose controls on politics for security, and also compel it to play a larger role in the economy, albeit with inadequate resources. Heavy-handed government would dampen India’s democracy and stall its economy. In both scenarios, the ‘theory of change’ is top-down. Change is led by leaders on top of large organisations in government and businesses.

Fortunately, a third, and more attractive scenario was also visible. In this scenario, changes people need are produced by them: by local leaders of women’s self-help groups; cooperatives for water conservation, and farming and dairying; and profitable business enterprises based on local production and consumption. Such ‘enterprises by the people for the people’, using local resources and energies, are more sustainable than top-down, large-scale programmes. It was projected that if India’s policymakers pursued this model of change, economic growth would be more inclusive, more environmentally sustainable, and faster too. They called this scenario ‘Pahle India’.

There are tensions within the BollyWorld model of wealth-driven growth the world has pursued in the last 30 years. Increasing inequality and insecurity around the world, rising along with ‘free market’ globalisation, has resulted in reactionary forces in many countries, including China and Russia. They have appeared in India too. Inequalities have further increased; top-down solutions to the global environmental crisis are producing only more hot air. Violence between powerful countries deploying the latest technologies is harming millions of innocent people around the world. The Indian scenarists had pointed to a choice before public policymakers when societal tensions increase in a BollyWorld-like scenario. One choice is concentration of power in governments, large business monopolies, and multinational bodies for imposing more security and pushing faster GDP growth. This leads to further unrest and Atakta economies. The other choice is: local systems solutions for environmental and economic problems cooperatively implemented by communities. This way solves global systemic problems; it also creates a more harmonious world.

India must promote the Pahle India way, of participative solutions developed by people themselves for their own places, to all countries in the G20 it hosts for a year. This was Gandhi’s nonviolent approach for ‘Poorna Swaraj’ — for full political, economic, and social freedom for all citizens. For too long now, India’s policymakers have paid only lip service to it. India must adopt this Gandhian approach itself more determinedly to make Pahle India a reality for its own citizens.