Futures India: society, nation-state, civilisation

The future of a phenomenon can only be understood in terms of (a) the conceptual construction one makes of it and (b) the changes in empirical content of that phenomenon. In turn, the empirical reality ought to be discerned in terms of the past-present-future dialectic. Keeping this in view, this paper begins with conceptual clarifications of the terms society, nation-state and civilization and situates India in terms of these notions. It is suggested that India’s future as a society and as a civilisation is durable although some changes in their content are inevitable. But as a ‘nation-state’ India may radically change given the contestations about it. Four competing value-orientations—cultural monism, cultural pluralism, cultural federalism and cultural subalternism—about the contemporary Indian nation-state have been identified. India’s future as a nation-state will depend upon the legitimacy these value orientations achieve in future.     

Technologies for the people: a future in the making

India’s post-independence policy of using science and technology for national development, and investment in research and development infrastructure resulted in success in space, atomic energy, missile development and supercomputing. Use of space technology has impacted directly or indirectly the vast majority of India’s billion plus population. Developments in a number of emerging technologies in recent years hold the promise of impacting the future of ordinary Indians in significant ways, if a proper policy and enabling environment are provided. New telecom technologies—a digital rural exchange and a wireless access system—are beginning to touch the lives of common people. Development of a low-cost handheld computing device, use of hybrid telemedicine systems to extend modern healthcare to the unreached, and other innovative uses of IT at the grassroots also hold promise for the future. Biotechnology too has the potential to deliver cost-effective vaccines and drugs, but the future of GM crops is uncertain due to growing opposition. Some of these emerging technologies hold promise for future, provided a positive policy and enabling environment.     

The futures of the colonised

A reading of Rabindranath Tagore’s last testament—Sabhyatar Sankat [11] (published in English as Crisis in Civilization [12])—reveals that it is an instance of how the colonised have shown at times astonishing capacity to make a transition from realistic criticisms to utopia, which serves as the most volatile critique of the colonial situation. Utopian thinking in the colonial world counters the reality of power, inspires and becomes the basis of hope and resistance. Dissolution and farewell—the two recurrent strains in Tagore’s essay—express the meaning of the rite of dreaming by the colonised. They also spiritualise the dangerous act of dreaming the future by those who feel their fate to be sealed. While politics of the present goes on, all along that, and all through that time, parallel attempts go on to re-make the nation into a new political society based on the incipient ideas of those times of justice and freedom. An overlapping historical sense prevails in a critical time, as it prevailed at the time Tagore wrote his last testament, and the clue to the overlap can be found only in an awareness of the contentious politics of the present, which a later-day chronicler will read as an act of seeing the future. History’s excess is future—the excess that defies rationality, like Tagore’s expectation of the advent of the Man from the East that defied logical explanations about the politics of his time.     

Future of secularism in India

The question of future of secularism in India is very important particularly at this juncture. Secularism was never meant to be the indifference to religion by our leaders and freedom fighters, who realised that India is a highly religious country. That is why even the most orthodox Hindus and Muslims accepted it as a viable ideology for India. But after independence Indian secularism followed a tortuous course and religious fundamentalism has grown dangerously in the last few decades. The Bhartiya Janta Party and the Sangh Parivar, in particular, are likely to intensify the Hindutva agenda in the future. In these political circumstances the future of secularism does not seem to be bright in the short run. But in the long run, India’s bewildering culture of pluralism, dating back many centuries, economic progress in the future and the well-established Indian democracy are factors that point to a more stable and secular polity.     

A 20-20 Vision for India: targets, policies and implementation

We live in a unipolar world not only politically and militarily, but intellectually too with globalisation attaining the status of dogma. As globalisation has not always helped developing countries, swadeshi, or self-reliance, has been strongly advocated by influential groups in India. Logically, there is space for both: globalisation for improving competitiveness of tradeables, and swadeshi for maximising employment through non-tradeables.India has been growing well but not as well it could because of excessive impedance to growth. Impedance has three components: weight of tradition, reluctance to change, and friction against movement. Positive feedback in the form of local autonomy has been suggested as a remedy. As positive feedback is inherently unstable, it should be circumscribed by negative feedback. Integral feedback, integrating over all local units combined together, and over time, should minimise risk of instability.Apart from local autonomy, India will progress fast only if bureaucracy is assured security. In particular, frequent, arbitrary and often vindictive transfers of officials have become a dreaded menace. They should be subjected to the rule of law. Politicians have become a problem; many of them bank on promoting hatred. As a remedy, each voter may be given as many votes as there are candidates, and also the option to make each vote either positive or negative. Then, any hate vote gained will be nullified by the negative votes. Hate will cease to be profitable.President Kalam’s proposal for shifting investment from congested cities to rural areas by linking loops of villages by four types of connectivity—physical, electronic, economic and knowledge—promises to hasten India’s growth, and improve the environment too. Ultimately, that way we can dream of a future where even the poorest will enjoy all basic Maslow Needs—water, shelter, education, health services, connectivity, good environment, and enough surplus of money and time to enjoy leisure.

Will I be rich, will I be pretty?

Will there be rainbows day after day?

—Song in the movie The Man Who Knew Too Much

Goliath Corporation: An instructional case in transfer pricing policy

This case illustrates some of the issues associated with setting firms’ transfer pricing policies. The simulation requires students to assume the roles of top management and divisional management for Goliath Corporation in negotiating transfer prices. The student playing the role of top management first selects a transfer pricing policy from four possible mechanisms: market-based, cost-based, negotiated, and dual-pricing. Given the top manager’s policy choice, divisional managers are then constrained to use that policy as they decide whether to purchase internally or externally based on their respective negotiations. In each negotiation, there is an ex ante best decision for Goliath as a whole. The case is thus useful in demonstrating how managers’ transfer price policy choices can lead to bad sourcing decisions.     

The birth of a nation: Accounting and Canada’s first nations, 1860–1900

The 1860–1900 period was both the “birth” of Canada but also the birth and institutionalization of a specific set of social relations between the federal government and First Nations peoples. This study examines the roles played by accounting and funding relations within the process of nation building. Throughout this formative period in Canada’s history, governance was attempted via the introduction of financial legislation and enacted by the Indian Department and agents in the field. As our analysis highlights, legislative initiatives, Indian Department pronouncements and the activities of agents imposed, enlisted and implied a variety of accounting technologies. This study not only explores how the federal government has used accounting/funding mechanisms in the attempt to translate government policy regarding indigenous peoples into practice but also provides a history of the present by examining the historical consequences of these interventions.     

The future of Muslim politics : Critique of the ‘fundamentalist’ theory of the Islamic state

This article considers the future of Muslim political thought in the context of growing de-Islamization and the dominance of Western institutions. The ‘fundamentalist’ theory of the Islamic state—total mobilization of Muslim societies under a universal state—is criticized as religiously an immanentist heresy, and politically a totalitarian nightmare. Proposed here is a way out of the moral and intellectual crisis in Islamic political thought through the principle of Shura—meaning that Muslims must evolve their own form of representative government.     

Future kinship and the study of culture

Throughout the 20th century, body and machine have provided distinctive parallel metaphors for the concept of culture. But now these metaphors are merging as human lives are increasingly engineered through technonatural processes. In one imagined future, biotechnology will give us the means to determine our own genealogy and the potential to play a role in the ‘culturing’ of the future, as the natural and unpredictable transmission of human characteristics is transformed into a predictable process arising from the manipulation of the gene pool. New procreative possibilities—fertilization in vitro, gamete donation, maternal surrogacy etc—challenge us to reconstrue notions of identity and kinship; the article speculates on the implications of this for possible cultural futures.     

Futures dreaming outside and on the margins of the western world

In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focused on the good society as created by technological progress, while non-western science fiction and futures thinking has focused on the fantastic, on the spiritual, on the realization of eupsychia—the perfect self.However, most theorists assert that the non-west has no science fiction, ignoring Asian and Chinese science fiction history, and western science fiction continues to ‘other’ the non-west as well as those on the margins of the west (African–American woman, for example).Nonetheless, while most western science fiction remains trapped in binary opposites—alien/non-alien; masculine/feminine; insider/outsider—writers from the west’s margins are creating texts that contradict tradition and modernity, seeking new ways to transcend difference. Given that the imagination of the future creates the reality of tomorrow, creating new science fictions is not just an issue of textual critique but of opening up possibilities for all our futures.

Science fiction has always been nearly all white, just as until recently, it’s been nearly all male

(Butler as quoted in [1]).

Science fiction has long treated people who might or might not exist—extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, however, many of the same science fiction writers who started us thinking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life did nothing to make us think about here-at home variation—women, blacks, Indians, Asians, Hispanics, etc [1].

Is all science fiction western? Is there non-western science fiction? If so, what is its nature? Does it follow the form and content of western science fiction, or is it rendered different by its own local civilizational historical processes and considerations? Has western science fiction moulded the development of the science fiction of the ‘other’, including feminist science fiction, in such a way that anything coming from outside the west is a mere imitation of the real thing? Perhaps non-western science fiction is a contradiction in terms. Or is there authentic non-western fiction which offers alternative visions of the future, of the ‘other’?     

Alternatives to blanket guarantees for containing a systemic crisis

This paper seeks to explain how policy actions undertaken at the outset of recent crises—particularly the issuance of extensive liquidity support and government guarantees—absorb off-budget fiscal resources and inappropriately constrain officials’ subsequent options for restructuring their country’s troubled financial and corporate sectors. Empirical evidence supports the commonsense view that the damage a crisis works on a country’s financial sector and on its real economy is lessened by taking market-mimicking actions that promptly estimate and allocate losses during the early stages of a crisis. The most important steps are to plan to call a timeout to separate hopelessly insolvent institutions from potentially viable ones and to provide haircuts, guarantees, and liquidity support in ways that protect taxpayers and avoid subsidizing insolvent institutions’ longshot gambles for resurrection.     

A theory of systemic risk and design of prudential bank regulation

Systemic risk is modeled as the endogenously chosen correlation of returns on assets held by banks. The limited liability of banks and the presence of a negative externality of one bank’s failure on the health of other banks give rise to a systemic risk-shifting incentive where all banks undertake correlated investments, thereby increasing economy-wide aggregate risk. Regulatory mechanisms such as bank closure policy and capital adequacy requirements that are commonly based only on a bank’s own risk fail to mitigate aggregate risk-shifting incentives, and can, in fact, accentuate systemic risk. Prudential regulation is shown to operate at a collective level, regulating each bank as a function of both its joint (correlated) risk with other banks as well as its individual (bank-specific) risk.     

Forecasting the world's problems : The Last Empire: the corporatization of society and diminution of self

A future scenario is postulated—‘The Last Empire’—based on concern with the ramifications of increasing corporatization and moves away from individualism. The globalization of the marketplace is marked by increasing cultural, psychological, social and ideological homogeneity, politicoeconomic centralization and the threat to individualism. Personal demands for autonomy and a liberalization of the human spirit provide the counter-thrust. These competing trajectories are the context within which major global problems are viewed. Five major issues are treated here: the global economy; nationhood and cultural determinacy; the economic dimension; the educational agenda; and the individual's outlook. In each area the clashes between individual involvement and corporatization, and their outcomes, provide the key to forecasting and dealing with the world's future problems.     

Virtual geography

Geography and its study are changing in subtle and dramatic ways in the rapid transition to a digital world. Here we present a preliminary discussion of how this new geography, which we call ‘virtual geography’, might be classified. Virtual geography is not merely Cyberspace per se for it comprises many types of place and space in which the digital world finds expression. We define cspace—the space within computers, cyberspace—the use of computers to communicate, and cyberplace—the infrastructure of the digital world, as key components of what Castells¹ refers to as ‘real virtuality’. Virtual geography is all this as well as the study of these worlds from traditional geographic perspectives. Like all classifications, the interesting questions lie at the boundaries between classes—between espace and cyberspace, cyberspace and cyberplace, and between all of these. We illustrate this variety and complexity with examples.     

Tax Evasion and Auditing in a Federal Economy

This paper analyzes the relation between tax auditing and fiscal equalization in the context of fiscal competition. We incorporate a model of tax evasion by firms into a standard tax competition framework where regional governments use their audit rates as a strategic instrument to engage in fiscal competition. We compare the region’s choice of audit policies for three different cases: A scenario of unconfined competition without interregional transfers, a scenario with a gross revenue equalization (GRS) scheme and finally, a scenario with net revenue sharing (NRS), where not only the revenues from taxation but also the regions auditing costs are shared. Without regional transfers, fiscal competition leads to audit rates which are inefficiently low for revenue-maximizing governments. While in general GRS aggravates the inefficiency, NRS makes the decentralized choice of auditing policies more efficient.JEL Code: H26, H71, H77     

Anticipatory action learning: conversations about the future

This paper proposes experimenting with anticipatory action learning for helping to create the future. It is an interactive process that relies strongly on a central thread of conversation among a variety of participants, from multiple perspectives, concerned with the social unit or project. Basically, anticipatory action learning is action research modified for foresight. It integrates research/search with decision and action, and downgrades the prerogative of a research elite, empowering all participants. Conversation allows meaning from a range of different worldviews to be shared and negotiated for studying, theorising and otherwise engaging the future—and more importantly, for helping to create it. Criteria are proposed for anticipatory action learning and procedural and administrative limitations are addressed.The visions we have about our own futures vary according to the mindset each of us stands in. It would be fascinating to compare the personally envisioned futures of everyone at an international meeting of futurists. Our futures should converge in some way where we share common interests as futurists, and diverge on the point of intercultural variety. But, would they differ from each other as widely as those of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese generals?It would be even more telling to compare the range of alternative futures envisioned by world leaders with the visions of their constituents and especially, say, with the visions of a woman in Africa’s Central Lakes region and of the homeless in Osaka.In a similar way, the means of engaging the future in order to study it, and its uncertainties, and the way people think about it, are variously dependent on the mindsets of the scholars and researchers, and the realities they find themselves in. Methodologies of futures studies range across the predictable: from empirical quantitative projection (linear and non-linear); to qualitative interpretation and critical analysis; and to participatory action research or its associate, action learning.Then, futures studies differs according to the disciplinary framework of the researcher, whether in physics, ecology, complexity science, social science and the humanities, critical cultural theory or philosophy. Further, there is the division of the pragmatic and academic perspectives.Actually, the very fact of having a formal methodology is itself derived from a dominant civilisational and ethical perspective, mainly Western.There is another important distinction in futures studies. On the one hand, there is the perspective from which futurists research, analyse and critique the future, or more precisely what other people think and say about the future. On the other, there is the perspective from which people in the focal social unit may think and act to create their own futures.Then, acting to create a future poses at least two further distinctions depending on whether one believes the future is structurally preordained, or whether human interaction and intervention play a significant part.It is from the perspective of participative human agency acting to create one future or another, at least partially, that this paper proceeds.Before going further, let us address the question of whether future-creating can rightly be claimed to constitute the study of the future, or future studies. If it is not part of futures studies, then at least future-creating activity does rely on input from the field, the results of studying and reflecting on alternative options for the future—futures, plural. Whatever way we look at creating the future, as opposed to merely researching data about it, the activity does represent a fairly direct, personal engagement of the future, as much as anyone can do about a time–space that has yet to arrive. This is an important distinction, since many empirical futures studies do not so directly engage the future, well not personally. Rather, they examine stated opinions of others about future options, and other people’s preferences, emerging issues and the like, themselves all valuable activities.

If, as Michel Godet has said, ‘...the future is not written anywhere and has still to be built...’ [[1]], creating the future is a central activity which at least deserves full consideration by the field of futures studies, especially if it relies on the analysis and critique of data generated or accessed around the activity itself.

Monetary policy, ‘dollarization,’ and parallel market exchange rates: The case of the Dominican Republic

Excessive money creation may give rise to inflation tax revenues and to a depreciation of the domestic currency. this in turn leads to a shift away from the domestic currency into a foreign currency (e.g., the US dollar, hence the term ‘dollarization’). From the domestic monetary authority's point of view, ‘dollarization’ is an unwelcomed phenomenomn, thus the monetary authorities will attempt to arrest the ‘dollarization’ phenomenon while maintaining the excessive money growth. This paper develops and tests a model which analyzes the effects of monetary policy on dollarization and the ‘parallel’ market exchange rates.     

Pricing to market with trade liberalization: The role of market heterogeneity and product differentiation in India’s exports

This paper studies the links between pricing to market (PTM) and trade liberalization using data for India’s exports (at the 4-digit level of classification) during the economic reforms period (1992–2005). We estimate a PTM model for exports to the G3 and three other emerging markets (Brazil, China and South Africa), distinguishing homogeneous from differentiated goods and correcting for changes in the level of protection faced by India’s exporters (import tariffs in destination markets), inflation and openness in the export destination market, a macroeconomic policy index partly reflecting changes in exporter’s costs, the share of the exporter in the destination market and the share of the product in the exporter’s total exports. We find that market heterogeneity changes the level of PTM, but PTM does not significantly differ between homogeneous and differentiated products. Indian exporters practice PTM by absorbing exchange rate changes into their mark-up in G3 markets, where they face tougher competition, but fully pass-through exchange rate changes in emerging markets. On the contrary, Indian exporters seem to be taking advantage of trade liberalisation in destination markets by marginally increasing exporter currency prices into emerging markets but not into the G3. However, in the case of differentiated goods, we find this effect of trade liberalisation for both G3 and emerging markets.     

Global modelling in the 1990s : A critical evaluation of a new wave

It seems that after a ‘golden decade’ in the 1970s and a period of decay in the 1980s, global modelling is making a comeback. In particular, the report Scanning the Future seems to mark the beginning of a new era in this respect. In this article this ‘new wave’ of the 1990s is compared with the ‘old wave’ of the 1970s. Although there is progress in the scientific realm, these new models lack a deep concern for the burning problems of our time like the poverty gap between the North and the South and the ‘ecological problematique’. In many ways these new models reflect the new mood of the times, which lacks any vision of a new paradigm and which is strongly ‘northern-centric’.     

Using z-scores to evaluate accounting students: a test of Weinstein’s suggestion

Based on analysis using hypothetical data, Weinstein suggested that z-scores should be used in the determination of accounting students’ grades. The computation of z-scores mitigates the subjectivity caused by differences in the variances of the individual components that make up the total points for the course. We tested Weinstein’s suggestion using actual data to determine the degree to which subjectivity resulting from different variances influenced grades based on a total point distribution. The effect on actual final letter grades assigned was determined by comparing the rankings in grade distributions based on total points versus rankings based on z-scores. Findings show minimal overall effects on letter grade differences between total point and z-score-based methods. Because the results using actual data in our study found smaller differences than suggested by Weinstein’s hypothetical data, our findings do not indicate a compelling need to use a z-score standardization method in determining students’ grades. However, since using z-scores is easy and final grade rankings differed in some cases, instructors might find it useful to compute z-scores in addition to their normal grading procedures.