The Hindu Business Line : Futurology comes under scanner

As one who was a founding member of Futuribles in India in the early 1960s, I was not a little surprised and dismayed to come across an article (The Future of Futurology) in the latest (December 30) issue of The Economist pouring scorn on futurological (or futurist) studies.

The sum and substance of the article is that anyone with pretensions to predict the future happenings in any particular field having to do with human and societal well-being might “as well wear a T-shirt saying ‘crackpot’ ... The only thing special about a futurologist is that he or she has no other job to do”!

The learned weekly further asserts: “The word ‘futurologist’ has more or less disappeared from the business and academic world, and with it the implication that there might be some established discipline called ‘futurology’.”

According to the article, gone are the days when one simply could extrapolate the future contingencies from the existing trends.

When, some 60 years ago, Bertrand de Jouvenal started the society of Futuribles in France, there was a certitude about sciences and national and international currents and cross-currents.

“The great determining technologies — electricity, the telephone, the internal combustion engine, even manned flight — were the products of a previous century, and their applications were well understood. The geopolitical fundamentals were stable, too, thanks to the Cold War. Futurologists extrapolated the most obvious possibilities...”

But the forces that are buffeting the world now are all outside the grasp of “99 per cent of us” who cannot make head or tail of climate change, ozone layer, nanotechnology, gene revolution, clash of civilisations and the quantum leaps in information and communications technology.

It will, in these circumstances, be foolhardy for anyone to chart the course for any field of human endeavour, other than in the very short-term.

So, (the wisely) unnamed writer of the article lays down certain short and crisp rules for those tempted to indulge in futuristic speculation: Think small; say you don’t know; talk less, listen more; confine yourself to fields of study which are still amorphous enough to permit fantasies.

Policy planning

I am quite sure that the article, for all the self-assured, almost aggressive, way it has argued its case, would make little impact on current thinking.

The various think-tanks and university departments established round the globe devoted o futurist studies are doing good work in bringing to light the prospects and pitfalls pertaining to issues and events, and providing leads and clues as to the contingency plans to reinforce the positive and mitigate the negative influences.

Policy planning, as a branch of governance, is itself an offshoot of futurist prognostications. Inspired by the India chapter of the Futuribles of which the then Home Secretary, L. P. Singh, was the founder-sponsor, the Ministries of Home and External Affairs, set up their own policy planning divisions, with myself and K. R. Narayanan (former President) respectively as Directors.

The Home Ministry’s studies on Centre-State relations, political defections, coalitions (when nobody even dreamt of them), agrarian discontent (predicting naxalism in the words “It will not be long before the green revolution turns into red”) and so on led to many policy innovations and legislative measures in anticipation of the developments presaged.

Based on this solid experience, I can claim that futurology is a very useful discipline that can help prepare policy makers in organisations for contingencies that may otherwise escape their attention in the pressure of day-to-day work. In the very process of bringing out their studies, futurologists mould public opinion which, in turn, leads to appropriate public initiatives.

The role that books like Future Shock and Megatrends played in stimulating thinking on future possibilities and challenges should not be underestimated.

B. S. RAGHAVAN