Scenarios are not merely numbers. They are credible narratives of how the future will evolve with different policies and different approaches to transformation. They offer choices and they project the likely outcomes of choices that can be made now.
~ Arun Maira
Image courtesy - Scenarios: Shaping India’s Future, Planning Commission of India (pdf)
An Excerpt from
By Arun Maira
A few years back, a large and diverse group of people in India applied themselves to these very questions. They were concerned that, while India seemed to have escaped the Hindu rate of growth that had dogged it until the 1980s, and had begun to change and grow faster since the 1990s, the improvement was not fast enough to eradicate the country’s enormous problems, such as poverty, failing social services, and poor infrastructure. They used a process called ‘generative scenario thinking’ in which the underlying forces within a complex situation are analyzed—not only the ‘facts’ that are visible above the surface. Thus, by understanding the interplay of underlying forces, insight is obtained into what is likely to emerge in the future. The diverse group in India, including economists, senior government officials, journalists, artists, businessmen, teachers, students, political leaders, and others combined their varied perspectives and constructed a systemic view of the Indian reality that they could not have seen from their own, narrow, perspectives.
With these insights, four scenarios emerged of the forces of change shaping India’s future. Since a picture can say more than a thousand words, evocative images from India’s own Panchtantra folk tales were selected to convey the essence of these four models of change and leadership. Recently when the World Economic Forum wanted to examine the future of India on behalf of its international members, it also used the process of scenario thinking and it built its scenarios with these insights.
Let me describe the scenarios of how India may change over the next 20 years and what the outcomes may be.
‘Atakta Bharat’: Buffaloes Wallowing
The first scenario of leadership and change is called ‘Buffaloes Wallowing’. This is a familiar sight in the Indian countryside: buffaloes cooling themselves in a pond. It is difficult for any of them to move because they are surrounded by others. In this scenario, many experts and bureaucrats, and such people in their ‘high-up’ positions are expected to determine the policies and changes required and to bring them about. However, they cannot all agree on what should be done. When one proposes, others oppose, and nothing much happens. (We loosely call such people in high positions ‘leaders’ regardless of how ineffective they are.) Meanwhile, the people in the country wait for progress, especially the young people who will need jobs when they grow up. Imagine a little boy on the side of the pond. That is the future of India, waiting for the so-called leaders to agree and move. The WEF called this scenario ‘Atakta Bharat’, which means India (Bharat) intermittently stalling as it progresses, hampered by a lack of consensus amongst the various political groups.