Monday, 20 April 2020

Think Tanks and dynamics of 21st century world


Col R Hariharan

[This article is based on the notes I had used in a seminar on "Future of Think Tanks and Policy Advice" organised by the Chennai Centre for China Studies, Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania, Press Institute of India, Chennai and the National Maritime Foundation at Chennai on January 30, 2020.]

21st century dynamics

Towards the second half of 20th century, global strategic architecture was shaken up with the collapse of Soviet Union. The uni-polar world order led by the US that emerged  is now being challenged by China's quest for creating a new world order, by taking advantage of globalisation of knowledge, technology and trade.

In this global backdrop, when I look at the world of Think Tanks (TT), based upon my three-decade long exposure to them as a participant and user, I find many of them suffering from the Dunning -Kruger Effect (DKE). 

Two Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, found the DKE as a cognitive bias, whereby people who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence. Not only they fail to recognize their incompetence, they are also likely to feel confident that they are actually competent. DKE can be summed up as:

"The more you know, the less confident you are likely to be. Because the experts know just how much they don't know, they tend to underestimate their ability, but it is easy to be overconfident when you have one simple idea of how things are. Try not to make cautiousness of experts as a lack of under-standing, nor to give much credence to lay-people who appear confident but have only superficial knowledge." 

I realize the universal wisdom of Bertrand Russell's words: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, yet wiser people so full of doubts."

Many TTs are not equipping themselves to handle three factors influencing  the emerging world order:

 1. Knowledge is fleeting as human mind is breaking new barriers, which we did not know even existed.

 2. This has led to progressive shedding of enduring values of last century. In their place, societies are adopting competitive strategies in almost every facet of human activity - societal dynamics, national and international politics, interpersonal relations, trade and commerce and even lifestyle.

3. Social turbulence is being generated in the process of relentless tinkering of societal norms and value systems and challenging dogmas and beliefs that flourished in 19th and 20th centuries. 

Many TT would like to consider themselves as repositories of knowledge, if not wisdom. However, they will have to give some serious thought to constantly renew themselves to meet the changing needs of society in this century. Their vision should now be not only to validate and renew their belief systems, but also look at new ones that are going to loom large in 21st century. 

I have serious doubts whether TT are readying themselves to face this existential threat. Otherwise, with the extinction of their relevance to society, they could end up as relics in the present century.

During my association of over three decades with national and international NGOs, which benefit from the knowledge of TT, I found sharing of knowledge is inadequate  between the two entities. This will have to be addressed more by TT, than NGOs, by becoming active participants in society's value chain of change agents. 

One way of doing it is to adopt Total Quality Management (TQT) techniques used in industry and business. TQM is a management approach for long term success through satisfaction of every ​​stakeholder, treated as customer. The TQM way is to make all members of an organization to participate in improving processes, products, services and the culture of the workplace. Unless, the TT address this issue with serious attention, they are likely to  meander as talk shops of society and governments.  

Media maladies 

Everyone is being bombarded by seamless impact of multimedia tools masquerading as information purveyors. It has queered the focus, pitch and commitment of traditional print and visual/electronic media. 

While some of the multimedia purveyors may have the social commitment of the print media of 60s, even they are getting buried under deluge of fake news, alt news, and political distortions and slants. Draconian electronic and legal protocols, trying eliminate such distortion, have also become fetters upon free media

However, commercialisation of media and its transformation on multimedia platforms have become the realistic way to survive in the consumer society. With big business houses hogging more and more media space in multiple format, life has become difficult for small players in the web space. But there is enough space in the jungle of ether, if only small players can sprint ahead of media mammoths chasing them.  

In this maelstrom, there is an urgent need for media TT to help the stakeholders to device strategies to enable them to continue their unique role as watch dogs and guardians of free democratic society. Helping them to do it will be a worthy challenge for TT on public policy also.

Strategic security 

Strategic security has emerged as one of the big sticks of national power projection in global power play. Technology has revolutionised warfare by modernizing the battle front, introducing real-time intelligence sharing, integration of command and control systems and enormous fire power. This has shortened the time for decision making both at the strategic and tactical ends. Wars have become exorbitantly expensive and horribly destructive. High fire power, brought upon by real time command and control system, has increased the danger of inadvertent triggering of wars, due to flawed national priorities.  

Considering the growing complexity of  strategic decision making, strategic security TT have no option but to become inter-disciplinary. They have to improve their networking with other TT in social and technical disciplines. In the emerging security environment, TT will have to formalize their networking with the stakeholders – defence policy makers,  security forces and defence equipment manufacturers to evaluate manufacturing integrity and battle field performance of armaments and technologies. This is going to be the challenge of strategic security TT as they invariably operate in their own cocoons of knowledge.

Summing up

To sum up, Think Tanks have to really think hard how they will continue to be relevant in the emerging world. Its realities are fleeting knowledge, constricting time and space for exploring new avenues of knowledge useful to society. TTs will also have to learn to manage the society and governments as they are demanding more value for money they invest.

Col R Hariharan, a retired MI specialist of South Asia and terrorism and insurgency, has experience as strategic analyst in media, resource person in management and long association with NGO organisations. E-mail: haridirect@gmail.com Blog: https://col.hariharan.info


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