PLANNING AS AN INTEGRATIVE MECHANISM
IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MALDIVES
Although this article was originally written
with a local audience in mind, it essentially deals with the fragmented nature
of the output of the world’s education system and its inevitable outcome.
Two fundamental aspects can be identified that call for planning to play a coordinative and integrative role. One relates to how our education system's set-up functions to hinder both the societal performance and the development process. The other relates to the fast changing nature of today's world and the consequent need for responsive adjustments to accommodate these pervasive changes in order to survive. We can see that both these aspects are directly related to the way the society functions, and thus are highly inter-related. And both aspects can be significantly improved towards desired ends through an integrative planning mechanism that has the capacity to effectively counter the main thrust of present damaging outcomes and produce positive results.
The first aspect relates to how the ineffectiveness of
both our societal performance and planning efforts that are directed at
enhancing that performance is at least a partial outcome of the set-up of our
education system -- in fact, the world education system, since we are closely
integrated into it. The signifi-cance
of education arises from the fact that development planning is a broad-scope
process that calls for an all-encompassing understanding of interrelated issues,
yet the current education system greatly narrows down the breadth of knowledge one
gains.
As students go higher in the school system, the scope
of knowledge they gain becomes progressively narrower. This results directly from the need for an
increasingly higher order of specialized knowledge. By the time they finish basic college
degrees, the scope of their thinking, thus their world views, are made so
narrow that they become by and large oblivious, and practically ignorant, of
most of what is beyond their narrow, specialized knowledge bases.
This may sound crazy, since we implicitly assume and
perhaps take it for granted that specialized college degrees make people “educated.” But the mental process works in such a way
that in most cases, pumping a narrow range of specialized knowledge into the
mind makes this knowledge base to loom larger while simul-taneously the rest
recedes into background, and is “filtered” or “masked” out. This is perhaps a survival mechanism built
into our biological system and activated as a reaction to what has come to be
known as “information overload.”
An illustrative example of the resulting situation is
the story of seven blind men who try to describe an elephant after each one
touches only one part of the elephant. The man who touches its legs, for
example, perceives it to be like a tree trunk; the one who touches the tail
perceives it to be like a snake; he who touches its side perceives it to be
like a soft wall; and so on. None of
them are completely wrong, but none are completely right either. But each one genuinely believes, and as a
result insists and is adamant, that the elephant is only like the part he has
touched and thus has knowledge about.
There is no basis for understanding what the whole elephant is
like. People who get high levels of
specialized knowledge and engage in the development planning process are not
very much unlike these seven blind men.
And in the context of the Maldives
This is by no means a criticism of, let alone a
judgment on, specialization; this is only a situation assessment. In fact, specialization is a necessary prerequisite for
a higher level of economic output, and is a basic defining characteristic of an
advanced economy. But an inherent basic component
of an advanced economy is a macroframework that works to benefit from high
levels of specialization. Thus in a “good”
advanced economy, specialization works to enhance increasingly higher output
levels.
But a similar integrative mechanism is not inherent in
a less developed economy. Thus when such
an economy, especially a small one like ours, imports a system naturally
well-suited to a large, advanced economy and plants it in its midst hoping to
achieve better societal performance, ie, development, the outcome is less than
desired. The result is an assortment of
people with specialized knowledge whose disjointed, narrow knowledge-bases do
not contribute to the formulation of an integrated whole (as it would be in a “good”
advanced economy) and thus remain fragmented, by and large. The increasingly large numbers of degree
holders who cannot earn a decent living with their specialized knowledge, and
increasingly cannot even find work in their respective fields of
specialization, is compelling evidence of this phenomenon.
A more dangerous outcome than the mere fact of
fragmented knowledge and the resulting waste is the enormous and pervasive
impact of destructive behaviour that is mostly unconsciously generated (primarily
as an outcome of these limitations) and over time tends to get ingrained in us.
Needless to say, there are factors other than the
set-up of the education system that hinder the effectiveness of societal
performance. But given that the way the
set-up of education system would most likely form the biggest and most easily
discernible of such factors, my comments here have targeted the education
system alone.
The circumstances created as a result of this
educational set-up, and the destructive effects arising as a result, can be at
least partially avoided by making the planning process more effective. Towards this end, I have been suggesting the
establishment of an integrative planning framework. But by an integrative framework, I do not mean
another bureaucratic organization. What
is meant is more a way of thinking and working than anything else.
In fact, an integrative framework as this is a necessary condition for any complex
organization such as a society. As an
organization moves from simplicity to complexity by creating an increasing
array of specialized functions, the need increasingly arises for coordination
among the fragmented specialties in order that the organization continues to
achieve its desired goals. If such
coordination is not forthcoming for any reason, results anticipated of
the organization will not materialize.
In addition, under the burden of an ever increasing range of internal
stresses resulting from movement of the organization towards ever increasing
complexity (arising from the desire for a higher output) it
will finally collapse, unless effective measures are adopted to counter and
reverse the situation, achievable by using effective planning, which can be realized
only thru a coordinative mechanism with the capacity to pull together
disjointed talents arising from specialized knowledge and create a system that
can function as an integrated whole.
The second aspect that calls for an effective
integrative planning framework relates to the pressures arising from the fast
pace of change that we currently experience in virtually every facet of our
lives. This aspect has been treated at
length in some of my earlier writings.
It was pointed out that the fast pace of change we encounter in the
world today renders the way we have been doing things in the past unsuitable as
current practices. This is also partly an outcome of, and is aggravated by, the
pressures for development we are nowadays constantly drowned in.
To respond to the mounting pressures for change and
meet the new demands arising from newer circumstances, we are in urgent and
great need to reinvent or reformulate new ways of doing things. The nature of today's problems are different,
hence the solutions, and behaviour, suited for problems of the past are no
longer applicable to today's situations.
Moreover, today's problems are complex and cut across various
disciplines. Thus no one person knowledgeable in one area has the answers to today's complex problems. This is the
most compelling reason why development of solutions to today's problems need
an integ-rative framework that has the capacity to tap into fragmented knowledge
bases referred, and create coherent synthesis.
As has been explained in my earlier writings, the
process of devising new solutions in response to newer demands of a changing
world constitute what can be loosely called “strategic planning.” This concept is most widely used in the
business world. There, strategic
planning implies alignment of an organization to its business environment,
which constitutes the main source of pressure for change and is mostly external
to it. But for a much more complex entity like a society, the impetus for
change arises from factors rooted in both internal and external sources. In reality, for a small open economy like
ours the interface between them is a very blurred one.
Irrespective of the origin of the sources of the
pressure for change, a society that, for any reason, cannot adapt to the
changing world will disintegrate, just as an organization that cannot regain
its competitiveness in its business environment will go bankrupt. It does not take a very fertile imagination to
figure out the dynamics of societal disintegration; we have to only open our
eyes and see what is going on in the world around us.(2) Also, it can be clearly seen
that such outcomes have little to do with material progress; for those societal
orders that are disintegrating are neither that poor nor their income
distributions that uneven. Moreover,
while virtually all these countries the collapse of whose societal order we are
witnessing are large enough and thus self-sufficient enough to achieve a degree
of insulation from the outside world, the small Maldives, with its heavy
reliance on the external world for survival (some 85% of its GDP goes for
imports, for example) just cannot retain its stability indefinitely without
realigning itself to the demands of changing circumstances. And as suggested, an integrative planning
framework is the effective means to this end.
In order to fully understand how the planning process
can act as an integrative mechanism, it is necessary to have some notion of
what effective planning is. On a number
of earlier occasions I have defined planning simply as sum total of a series of
tech-niques aimed at achieving a given
set of goals or objectives in a given time frame.
It can be seen from this definition that the ability
of tech-niques to achieve goals depends on our
understanding of how the techniques we choose can lead to the goals we desire,
or the relationship of intended
action to results sought. This
relationship can be described as “theory.”
Simply stated, “theory” is basically a generalized
body of knowledge applicable to similar situations as a guide to action aimed
at achieving desired results. Obviously,
a “theory” would be “good” to the extent to which it is applicable to similar
situations to help achieve desired outcomes.
Equally, the more situations to which a theory is effectively
applicable, the more powerful it would be.
Generally speaking, goodness or effectiveness of a theory
is determined by three fundamental criteria -- the extent to which it can
contribute to:
### understanding
of the nature of situation at hand;
### prediction
of the outcome of intended action; and based on the understanding and predictability
gained,
### control
of the direction of intended action.
Thus planning will be effective to the extent that
understanding prevails, action adopted is successful in achieving the results predicted,
and efforts can be kept focused on the predicted results. Since these are ends
realizable only via good theory, it follows that planning would be
effective to the extent that it is backed by good theory.
Conversely, efforts not backed by an understanding of
the nature of the situation at hand, and given this lack, do not help the
prediction of results the intended actions will generate, thus with little
scope for control over the direction of the action taken, such efforts cannot
be called planning.
Once again, the way the world education system is
set-up forms a significant barrier that impedes efforts to make development
planning effective. For to-date, there
is no comprehensive body of theoretical knowledge that pulls together aspects
of societal action, which form the arena for development planning. Of the available theoretical foundations, three
aspects are of parti-cular relevance to our purpose: the economic, the social, and
the physical or spatial.
With little exaggeration it can be said that those
with a background of economics are hardly aware of the scope and methodology of
the other two sides -- their theoretical background being traditionally limited
to manipulation of economic instruments (monetary and/or fiscal policy) and the
economic dynamics of the “market” based on “rational decisions” of “economic person”
is supposed to facilitate the way for all other societal needs. But because such “market dynamics” frequently
do not work the way they are anticipated by the economists, especially in the
context of the less advanced economies, those with backgrounds in sociological
and/or political science theory (who are not usually well-versed with
economists’ preachings) rubbish the notion of “market dynamics”; for them
radical action is the main thrust of the means for societal advancement. And those grounded in physical or spatial planning are usually
ill-equipped with aspects of both economic and social theory, and hence are
naturally prone to understate the economic and social forces that shape the
physical scape, which is the arena for socioeconomic action; thus
traditionally, their focus is on colourful and nice “paper plans,” which do not much reflect the all-pervasive socioeconomic dynamics.
This is just a sampling indicative of the output of
the education system of the modern world and underscores its fragmented
nature. And while the example describes the
three areas central to development planning, the concept could be easily generalized
to include most other areas.
Importantly, while the three areas mentioned are
integral to the proper functioning of any society, just like the seven blind
men who touched the specific parts of the elephant believed that the whole
elephant is only (or mainly) like the part each one has touched, most of those
grounded in any single area also tend to think that their specific field of
expertise has answers to most of the problems that plague societies today.
A foremost and critical task of effective planning is,
there-fore, to overcome this mental perception of those engaged in the planning
process. As mentioned, the way to avoid
the incalcu-lable damage caused by this state of affairs is via an integra-tive
planning framework capable of bridging the gulfs arising from the fragmented
knowledge bases that are the outputs of the world education system. And such a framework will provide the necessary
impetus for generating the much needed solutions for the increasing range of
problems of a fast changing world.
A final insight that can help us understand the nature
of planning and thus how it can act as an integrative framework as suggested,
is to realize that the usual functions of planning can be grouped into allocative
and innovative categories.
This is a direct outcome of the definition of planning given above. Planning was defined as the sum total of
techniques used to achieve a given set of goals. Now, goals and techniques can be either known
or unknown. Thus if both elements are
known, then planning would take a “bureaucratic” form in which existing rules/procedures
prevail, the process largely involving the allocation of resources to
anticipated demands. This would thus represent
the allocative function of planning. On the other hand, if either or both of those
two elements are unknown or unclear, as it would be in a fast changing world, then
one has to begin by clarifying them. If
goals are not clear, the process would have a “negotiating and bargaining”
characte-ristic; if techniques are not known, it will have a “research and development”
characteristic; if both of them are unknown or unclear, the resulting process
would have both negotiating-bargaining and research-development
characteristics all at the same time. Planning
of this type in which the search for new goals and/or techniques is involved will,
by its very nature, represent the innovative
functions of planning.
_____________________________________________________________
(1) Written in
October 1997; edited February 2002 and October 2003.
(2) Refers to turmoil
in the communist block following the demise of USSR.
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
NOTE: The last paragraph was written after I
read the following quote by Michael Crichton; characterizing labels of the four
planning types in it: adopted from Dr Karen
Christensen in "Coping with Uncertainty in Planning," Journal of American
Planning Association, Winter 1985; definition of planning: based on undergraduate lectures in architecture, 1974-1975.
