In order to accomplish the task of transforming the agricultural sector in India, scenario planning was construed to be an aid in orchestrating this transformation and a bunch of key players were also assembled together to orchestrate the transformation; these key players are as follows (Wade, 2012):
(1.) The government of India, via the national director of its National Agriculture Innovation Project (NAIP).
(2.) The World Bank, via two of its departments, namely: The South Asia Agriculture and Rural Development (SASAR) and the Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) – the adoption and employment of a scenario planning exercise was advised by the World Bank.
(3.) A couple of fellows, who lead Shell’s scenario planning effort as well as are foremost experts at scenario planning, were ostensibly recruited as consultants for the scenario planning exercise; these experts are Kees van der Heijden and Ron Bradfield.
(4.) A project implementation team, which comprised of so-called remarkable people; these people, who were essentially various experts and stakeholders in this agricultural sector transformation, included government officials, farmers and officials from the private sector, academic institutions and international aid agencies – Wade (2012) furnishes more details on the spectrum of these participants who constitute the project implementation team.
Just like with the accomplishment of any task at all, the task that needs to be accomplished itself (by the use of scenario planning) needs to be identified. At the big-picture, strategic level, the task that needs to be accomplished is the orchestration of a transformation in the agricultural sector in India and, at the rudimentary level, the task that needs to be accomplished can be broken down into a number of steps or subtasks. Figure 1 below, which illustrates the problem-solving activity that Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) engages in, exemplifies a critical and initial subtask (i.e., problem-solving) among the steps or subtasks into which the task that needs to be accomplished can be broken down; these steps or subtasks are as follows:
(1.) Appraise the current state of affairs in the agricultural sector in India. This state of affairs comprises of (A) A range of forces/factors that impact agricultural development globally, including population growth, increasing urbanization, middle class size growth, increasing depletion of agricultural resources and inputs, increasing technological developments and the types of agricultural model adopted and (B) The unique situation in terms of how these impacting forces/factors shape the current state of agricultural development in India; the current state of agricultural development in India is characterized by agricultural efforts being small-scale (i.e., the being of a large number of small efforts), ownership of agricultural practice is via inheritance (from one generation to another) and agricultural efforts being subsistence-oriented (i.e., people engage in agricultural practice in order to feed a smaller number of mouths, particularly their immediate families, rather than in order to engage in a career and, thereby, create jobs and generate income).
(2.) Visualize how the socio-economic terrain or climate, in India in 2030, will look like (this is accomplished by creating scenarios that furnish a picture of the socio-economic terrain/climate, in India in 2030). Two runs or attempts were conducted in order to generate the scenarios in this exercise (the first run generated initial scenarios, which were then fleshed out during the second run); the scenarios generated were through the hills (commercialized economy and cohesive society), in the valley (controlled economy and cohesive society), along the edge (commercialized economy and fragmented society) and over the mountains (controlled economy and fragmented society).
(3.) Craft or develop a strategic plan by which the agricultural sector in India may be transformed from its current unique situation to a sector that is characterized by being large-scale and market-oriented (i.e., oriented towards income generation and job creation), as opposed to being small-scale, owned-via-inheritance and subsistence-oriented. In order to craft or develop this strategic plan, certain tasks need to be accomplished and accomplishing these tasks entails meeting a number of requirements, including achieving technological and institutional innovation, increasing the scale of agricultural practice (from small-scale to large-scale) and appropriately, adequately compensating, re-empowering, re-equipping and re-positioning persons who will be displaced or disenfranchised by the transformation process. Furthermore, in the process of crafting the strategic plan, the various scenarios (which were obtained via scenario planning) are kept in perspective all the while to guide this process.
(4.) Apply both the strategic plan that needs to be developed/crafted and the visualization of the future that needs to be orchestrated. The strategic plan will inform policies and decisions, which need to be made today, for the agricultural sector and an analysis of the scenarios created will show how these scenarios will positively impact (i.e., improve) the policies and decisions that need to be made today as part of accomplishing the desired agricultural transformation/reforms. These policies and decisions – including the research and development efforts that should be engaged in order for technologies to be developed and other accomplishments to be attained – are those that will enable India to be better positioned such that the desired transformation will be accomplished, no matter what scenario(s) eventually play out. The fundamental goals of the strategic plan are (A) To feed people (B) To sustain resources and (C) To promote trade.
The larger, overarching task of orchestrating a transformation in the agricultural sector in India, whose accomplishment comprises of the foregoing steps or subtasks, will be impacted by a number of forces/factors; as I mentioned, in the very first of the foregoing steps or subtasks above, these impacting forces/factors shape the current state of agricultural development in India – they also shape the planned transformation in the agricultural sector in India, which is desired to be orchestrated. Wade (2012) discusses how nine themes of impacting forces/factors were distilled into the following three forces/factors:
(1.) Economical: This concerns whether India’s economy will tend to become more liberalized, market-based or more state-controlled, centrally managed.
(2.) Social: This concerns how adequately Indian people – especially rural people – will organize themselves as societies in their various communities (e.g., villages and larger communities), how strongly organized, well-knit and fairly treated these communities will be.
(3.) Environmental: This concerns the impact that climate change (especially global warming) would have on issues such as agricultural production, water management, etc.
Benefits of this scenario planning exercise include a number of envisaged outcomes, which were captured in the various scenarios, already playing out after some years since the scenario planning exercise was conducted. Wade (2012) says that, on the overall, the scenario planning exercise has greatly influenced the NAIP of India, which has been a game-changing project – the successful impact of the scenario planning exercise on the NAIP is so positively great such that the government of India has decided to extend the exercise to address other future planning concerns/issues.
References
Ethiopian ATA (2014). Innovations to help our country grow: Our approach. Retrieved from http://www.ata.gov.et/about/our-approach/
Wade, W. (2012). Scenario planning: A field guide to the future. New Jersey. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
(1.) The government of India, via the national director of its National Agriculture Innovation Project (NAIP).
(2.) The World Bank, via two of its departments, namely: The South Asia Agriculture and Rural Development (SASAR) and the Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) – the adoption and employment of a scenario planning exercise was advised by the World Bank.
(3.) A couple of fellows, who lead Shell’s scenario planning effort as well as are foremost experts at scenario planning, were ostensibly recruited as consultants for the scenario planning exercise; these experts are Kees van der Heijden and Ron Bradfield.
(4.) A project implementation team, which comprised of so-called remarkable people; these people, who were essentially various experts and stakeholders in this agricultural sector transformation, included government officials, farmers and officials from the private sector, academic institutions and international aid agencies – Wade (2012) furnishes more details on the spectrum of these participants who constitute the project implementation team.
Just like with the accomplishment of any task at all, the task that needs to be accomplished itself (by the use of scenario planning) needs to be identified. At the big-picture, strategic level, the task that needs to be accomplished is the orchestration of a transformation in the agricultural sector in India and, at the rudimentary level, the task that needs to be accomplished can be broken down into a number of steps or subtasks. Figure 1 below, which illustrates the problem-solving activity that Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) engages in, exemplifies a critical and initial subtask (i.e., problem-solving) among the steps or subtasks into which the task that needs to be accomplished can be broken down; these steps or subtasks are as follows:
(1.) Appraise the current state of affairs in the agricultural sector in India. This state of affairs comprises of (A) A range of forces/factors that impact agricultural development globally, including population growth, increasing urbanization, middle class size growth, increasing depletion of agricultural resources and inputs, increasing technological developments and the types of agricultural model adopted and (B) The unique situation in terms of how these impacting forces/factors shape the current state of agricultural development in India; the current state of agricultural development in India is characterized by agricultural efforts being small-scale (i.e., the being of a large number of small efforts), ownership of agricultural practice is via inheritance (from one generation to another) and agricultural efforts being subsistence-oriented (i.e., people engage in agricultural practice in order to feed a smaller number of mouths, particularly their immediate families, rather than in order to engage in a career and, thereby, create jobs and generate income).
(2.) Visualize how the socio-economic terrain or climate, in India in 2030, will look like (this is accomplished by creating scenarios that furnish a picture of the socio-economic terrain/climate, in India in 2030). Two runs or attempts were conducted in order to generate the scenarios in this exercise (the first run generated initial scenarios, which were then fleshed out during the second run); the scenarios generated were through the hills (commercialized economy and cohesive society), in the valley (controlled economy and cohesive society), along the edge (commercialized economy and fragmented society) and over the mountains (controlled economy and fragmented society).
(3.) Craft or develop a strategic plan by which the agricultural sector in India may be transformed from its current unique situation to a sector that is characterized by being large-scale and market-oriented (i.e., oriented towards income generation and job creation), as opposed to being small-scale, owned-via-inheritance and subsistence-oriented. In order to craft or develop this strategic plan, certain tasks need to be accomplished and accomplishing these tasks entails meeting a number of requirements, including achieving technological and institutional innovation, increasing the scale of agricultural practice (from small-scale to large-scale) and appropriately, adequately compensating, re-empowering, re-equipping and re-positioning persons who will be displaced or disenfranchised by the transformation process. Furthermore, in the process of crafting the strategic plan, the various scenarios (which were obtained via scenario planning) are kept in perspective all the while to guide this process.
(4.) Apply both the strategic plan that needs to be developed/crafted and the visualization of the future that needs to be orchestrated. The strategic plan will inform policies and decisions, which need to be made today, for the agricultural sector and an analysis of the scenarios created will show how these scenarios will positively impact (i.e., improve) the policies and decisions that need to be made today as part of accomplishing the desired agricultural transformation/reforms. These policies and decisions – including the research and development efforts that should be engaged in order for technologies to be developed and other accomplishments to be attained – are those that will enable India to be better positioned such that the desired transformation will be accomplished, no matter what scenario(s) eventually play out. The fundamental goals of the strategic plan are (A) To feed people (B) To sustain resources and (C) To promote trade.
Source: Ethiopian ATA (2014)
Figure 1: An Illustration of an Approach to Problem-solving
(1.) Economical: This concerns whether India’s economy will tend to become more liberalized, market-based or more state-controlled, centrally managed.
(2.) Social: This concerns how adequately Indian people – especially rural people – will organize themselves as societies in their various communities (e.g., villages and larger communities), how strongly organized, well-knit and fairly treated these communities will be.
(3.) Environmental: This concerns the impact that climate change (especially global warming) would have on issues such as agricultural production, water management, etc.
Benefits of this scenario planning exercise include a number of envisaged outcomes, which were captured in the various scenarios, already playing out after some years since the scenario planning exercise was conducted. Wade (2012) says that, on the overall, the scenario planning exercise has greatly influenced the NAIP of India, which has been a game-changing project – the successful impact of the scenario planning exercise on the NAIP is so positively great such that the government of India has decided to extend the exercise to address other future planning concerns/issues.
References
Ethiopian ATA (2014). Innovations to help our country grow: Our approach. Retrieved from http://www.ata.gov.et/about/our-approach/
Wade, W. (2012). Scenario planning: A field guide to the future. New Jersey. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
