A few years ago, the deluge in Mumbai produced a miracle. As the city started getting flooded, hundreds of young men suddenly appeared in the water from nowhere. They risked their own life to save children and old folks who could not find their way. Behind these noble Samaritans were residents of buildings located at spots where the accumulation of water was immense. They hosted unknown school children trapped in the water in their homes. While civic and business leaders proved to be inadequate or uninterested or both, a huge and spontaneous coalition of common citizens across the city mitigated what could have been a serious humanitarian tragedy.

The world did better in the face of the Asian Tsunami. This time not only common people and NGOs but also governments and businesses worked together to organise rescue and relief. Similarly, when SARS scared the world, multilateral organisations, national governments and airlines cooperated to limit the damage. Scientists from 13 countries worked in a collaborative spirit to develop a vaccine. Eventually, the epidemic was controlled with less than a few hundred causalities.

It is amazing to witness human tendency to cooperate in times of crisis. It is equally amazing that this spirit of cooperation is conspicuous by its absence when we need to bring about positive change. In the city of Mumbai where it took 60 minutes for hundreds of common people, without any communication with one another, to form a coalition on the day of the deluge, it has proved impossible after almost 60 years of India’s independence to form a coalition to keep the city clean or plan its housing and roads in a sensible manner.

Asia can cooperate to prevent the spread of SARS and organise relief measures in Tsunami. However, governments, business and civil society cannot cooperate to address the problems of climate change, chronic poverty, and conflict. Asia is not alone. Polarisation is more serious in Africa and Latin America and it is making its way in Europe and North America.

However, the world is changing. The forces of polarisation should see writing on the wall from a large number of initiatives that are mushrooming at all levels. In the global space, the United Nations Global Compact has mobilised almost 4000 companies on a voluntary basis to agree to a code of conduct on a number of issues ranging from caring for climate to responsible investments. Other coalitions have come up to fight AIDS, TB and malaria or to make poverty history.

On a recent 16-hour flight from New York to Mumbai, I read a book by partners of Booz Allen Hamilton, a management consulting firm, proposing that we need to form mega-communities to bring about positive change in the world. It is not enough to collaborate only in times of crisis. In fact, it is essential for business, government and civil society to work together to address long-term challenges facing local communities, nations and humanity as a whole.

In my last column in this series, I had shared the Strategic Foresight Group research in progress, which clearly proves links between business, peace and sustainability. A survey of more than 120 countries shows that the countries that are peaceful and follow sustainable practices are the most competitive and the easiest to do business with. Thus, business has a direct stake in peaceful and sustainable societies – an objective which cannot be pursued by business alone without active partnership with the state and other constituents of the society. Similarly, the society at large has a stake in the success of business in order to produce technological progress and economic growth.

The question is how to create operational linkages between business, government and civil society. The Booz Allen folks introduce the concept of mega-communities to make such a triangular relationship operational. At the community level, it can simply involve an electric power company forging partnership with local government and civil society groups from the planning stage to set up a new plant or local business, management students and politicians forming a coalition to revitalise a dead district. At the global level, it can involve educational institutions, technology pioneers, business groups, investment companies, governments and political leaders coming together across nations and sectors to launch inter-linked practical initiatives and policy discourse. This is forming a global mega-community, which must link to several existing communities to make it really global.

In such a global mega-community there is no hierarchy and there is no single leader. It is a loosely structured but largely spontaneous effort to make peace and sustainability a living system. If the 21st century is to be governed on the basis of collaborative problem-solving, mega-communities are our need of the hour. That is why it will be interesting to watch the outcome of the international conference on business, peace and sustainability. It will be organised by the Strategic Foresight Group and co-hosted by the United Nations Global Compact in association with the University of Mumbai and a number of knowledge partners.

Such efforts, those at Mumbai conference and elsewhere attempt to provide the biggest answer of our time. At a time when the industrial economy has to evolve to a new stage due to the crisis of fossil fuel and when humanity itself may be entering the next phase of evolution, as discussed by my colleague Ilmas Futehally in her column this month, the question is whether we move to the next stage of human civilization with a conflict mindset or a collaborative mental framework. If we choose the former, climate change and human-made demons may bring a real end to history. If we choose the latter, we have to think in terms of global mega-communities.