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
No comments:
Post a Comment