News
Sundeep Waslekar, President of Strategic Foresight Group, shares his story on the evolution of SFG.
There was a Marriott Hotel between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. I was booked there from 10 September 2001 for a few days. Ilmas had to visit New York as a newly elected non-resident fellow of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Relations. They had booked her at Barbizon in Uptown NY. But I suggested she also stay at the World Trade Centre.
A few days before the visit, Chinese dairy farmers insisted that I visit China exactly from 10 September for a study on milk economy that we were involved in. The Chinese always have a way to get what they want. Thank goodness they prevailed on this occasion. I went to Shanghai and Beijing. Ilmas went to New York and stayed at Barbizon.
We both escaped from being part of the world’s most gruesome statistics.
A new theory, Clash of Civilizations, began to seize the mind of those who shape global discourse. But it was not convincing. A few months later, Hussain bin Alawi, Foreign Minister of Oman, would explain to me in his modest office: “Those who are civilized do not clash. Those who clash are not civilized. Therefore, clash of civilizations is incorrect English.”
It was not fair for world leaders to define the emerging world in terms of a religious or cultural conflict. But for those who disagreed, it was essential to find an alternative narrative. Moreover, such an alternative narrative had to be forward-looking if it had to be productive. After all, time travels in only one direction. First there is future tense. At some stage it becomes present tense and the present tense becomes past tense. While future tense is still future, we can shape it – if only we can, in a credible way, anticipate it.
These thoughts crowded our minds as Shrikant, I and Ilmas huddled together at Ilmas’s apartment one afternoon. We felt the need to create something that could anticipate and help influence future. The sound of waves from the Juhu Beach made the conversation difficult. It provided excuses for pauses. After one such pause, Ilmas declared: “Whatever we do, we have to be driven by values and emerge among the best in the world. If we don’t, we fold up.”
The day the thought of Strategic Foresight Group was born, its terms of death were also spelt out. We decided that we would not create an endowment. Shrikant defined the philosophy: “We will be there, as long as there is a demand for us. We do not need to be there, when nobody needs us any longer. An endowment and the financial security that goes with it will make us a bureaucracy focussed on survival.” The ‘foresight” in the name implied “forecasting with insight” and our logo represented forward thrust of our approach.
We began with analysis of the future of India and Pakistan because we knew these countries the best in our earlier avatar as a group, the International Centre for Peace Initiatives. We could afford only one person’s salary, so we placed advertisements and recruited Leena Pillai. As demand for our work and revenue grew, we could recruit two more persons, an affable elderly gentleman whom I called Tikku and young Gausia who wanted to create a house full of books for her infant daughter to grow up in, the value orientation that impressed Ilmas in the interview.
Formally beginning at the start of 2002, our first report came out in May 2002. We released The Future of Pakistan without any fanfare – we simply sent it out to a mailing list of opinion makers. When we presented it at the United Services Institute, the think-tank of serving and retired Indian military officers, we were chided for predicting that General Musharraf would be forced to leave power in 5 years. He had just won a referendum. He had strong US support. He appeared invincible. However, the report demonstrated that it is possible to use mathematics in social sciences, though not with the same degree of perfection in natural sciences. General Musharraf was overthrown in exactly 6 years from the release of the report.
In May 2002, I visited London. These were the days of rumours of a full-scale war between India and Pakistan. Fleet Street had begun to calculate dead bodies that would be left after the nuclear exchange between the two countries. I tried to convince the Fleet Street mandarins that no war would take place between India and Pakistan next week or next year. It is now ten years since and thank goodness the tensions between the two neighbours have not taken them as far as the battlefield.
The war that was about to take place then was between Iraq and the United States. At Davos, I saw Secretary of State Collin Powell making a case for it in January 2003. Only the Americans in the audience stood up after his speech. The rest were sitting. The emerging world divide was very illustrative in the mountain resort.
As Strategic Foresight Group published more reports that were accepted by the world community as a credible basis for analysis and discourse, more and more people urged us to shift the focus from anticipation to the resolution of issues. The World Economic Forum included me in the Council of 100 Leaders, chaired by HRH Prince Turki al Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury. The C-100 meetings were an exciting part of Davos.
At one meeting of C-100, Prince Turki and Lord Carey steered us into taking the centre chair turn by turn to voice our views. Everyone had the opportunity to shape the discourse. Everyone found the experience very fair. At the end of it, I quipped to Prince Turki: “If only international politics could be conducted with the same discipline and fair rules, there would be no conflict.” He asked me to join him for a cup of coffee. I had just struck a chord to make a new friendship.
Several discussions with HRH Prince Turki, Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa, Deputy Foreign Minister of Oman Syed Badr, Abdullah Al Khulaifi (Chairman of Qatar’s Constitution Commission who later on fell out with the regime and retired from public life) and others at Davos, Muscat, London, Cairo on the one hand and with Graham Watson, then Leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament; Gareth Evans, President of International Crisis Group in Brussels and Vidar Helgesen, the then Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway on the other, led to the process of SFG facilitating regular West-Islam dialogue. Lord Alderdice, now Chairman of Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Lords and earlier World President of Liberal International joined this process and later on emerged as a friend, philosopher and guide of the organisation.
Working with Graham Watson’s office at the European Parliament was a post-modern experience. Often the SFG team members sitting in the next room were talking more regularly to Graham’s team in Brussels than with us on issues ranging from handlings sensitive diplomatic requests to determining the drinks menu for the reception.
The West-Islam dialogue process was rewarding. It resulted in clearly demonstrating that terrorism was a function of demand and supply in which religion was not the cause but an instrument of those who had destruction in their mind.
We decided to test this with Oxford students at a formal debate organised by the famous Oxford Union. As we moved from a five-course dinner surrounded by young men in black bow ties and young women in elegant gowns, the taste of champagne lingering on our tongues, to the dim lights of the Oxford Union debating hall, tension enveloped us. Lord Alderdice and I spoke in favour of the motion proposing that religion is not the main cause of present day terrorism. Ilmas sat between us to cheer us up. We won the motion with 70% votes. Lord Alderdice put up an extraordinarily stunning performance.
While Alderdice led from the front, Graham Watson was a quiet coalition-builder. Strategic Foresight Group benefited immensely from wisdom and encouragement of the two distinguished British political leaders, as we transformed from a think-tank focussed on South Asia to the one with a global reach.
There were others. Paul Martin, Canada’s Prime Minister, and Recep Tayyip Ergodan, Turkey’s Prime Minister included us in their most exciting endeavours. Martin was trying to create G-20, to create space for emerging economies in the architecture of global governance (He called it L-20). Paul Heinbecker, former Canadian ambassador, was part of his core team. Jim Balsillie, founder of Blackberry, was a private sector partner. Balsillie set up Centre for International Governance Innovation at Waterloo, his hometown with Heinbecker and others leading it. Paul Martin advised Heinbecker to include think-tanks from other parts of the world in the L-20 initiative. It began with lot of hope. Once I missed my flight connection and reached Ottawa late. I kept away from Prime Minister Martin as I had not shaved and had rushed from the airport to the Lester Pearson Building on Sussex Drive where the L-20 meeting was taking place. On his way out, Paul Martin sought me out to exchange a few thoughts. He was just making a point that appearance did not matter.
After Martin lost elections and the financial crisis hit the world, George Bush created G-20. It is now set to replace G-8 as the primary forum for summit level dialogue on global governance.
Prime Minister Erdogan struck a warm rapport with me and Ilmas from the very first moment we met. As did his entire team including Saban Disli, Yasar Yakis, Egemen Bagis and others. Abdullah Gul was more relaxed but he, Erdogan and all Turks are amazingly warm. Ever since the first meeting in early 2005, SFG has always been received warmly in Turkey. Erdogan’s AK Party has co-hosted SFG workshops and Disli, Yakis, Bagis and other AK Party MPs have participated in SFG processes outside Turkey.
One such process in our shift from analysis to resolution of issues was to create a tool called “cost of conflict”. This tool measures direct and indirect costs of a given conflict on a large number of parameters, including military, human, political, diplomatic, economic, environmental, cultural and others.
We first published Cost of Conflict between India and Pakistan in January 2004. In April of that year, India and Pakistan announced beginning of the process of reconciliation. It is not our case that we contributed to this reconciliation process. But several key decision makers in New Delhi and Islamabad who wanted to turn around the bilateral relationship found the tool very useful. A similar report on Sri Lanka followed, with support from Erik Solheim who was then Norwegian (and international) mediator in the island country.
When Cost of Conflict in the Middle East came out in January 2009, we missed a historic opportunity. We were in close contact with the offices of Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The two sides were happy to issue a joint statement welcoming the report and calling for peace in the region. Prime Minister Erdogan was happy to draft it. But, alas, Israel’s invasion in Gaza just after the Christmas of 2008 made it impossible and irrelevant to come out with the statement.
We lost an opportunity but we gained two valuable friends – senior Swiss diplomats Thomas Greminger and Jean Daniel Ruch who helped us through the process. The report was launched at the United Nations premised in Geneva with worldwide media coverage. Of course, this report was possible with the enthusiasm of about a 100 thought leaders from the Middle East – Ephraim Sneh, former Israeli minister and Mohammed Shtayyeh, former Palestinian minister, Yair Hirshfeld, Israeli scholar and Muhammad Labadi, Palestinian scholar, Hesham Youssef, Egyptian diplomat who headed Arab League Secretary General’s office, and several others.
HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan took a lead to spread awareness about the cost of conflict in the region once he read our report. He has been the most ardent advocate of peace, justice and reconciliation. It did not take long for us to discover another friend, philosopher and guide in him – and also a very generous host on several occasions at his home in the Royal Palace in Amman.
Ambassadors Greminger and Ruch moved out of Switzerland to take up new postings but continue to be good friends. At Thomas’s house, Ilmas and I discovered that there are many more creative ways to prepare fondue than just heating cheese.
Greminger and Ruch also introduced us to Francois Muenger and Thomas Walder of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. Our next chapter in Swiss partnership focussed on trans-boundary water security, crafting of the Blue Peace concept and the present efforts to implement Blue Peace in different parts of the world. Francois is so dedicated to the future of water that I expect him to turn up in blue suit each time we meet. When the Blue Peace report was launched by the President of Switzerland at an international peace conference in Geneva, Ilmas worked hard to pressurise all men to wear blue ties. She could convince most of us but not Francois who actually loves black the way the Dutch royal family loves orange.
Since Thomas Walder was posted to Latin America, Johan Gely joined Francois Muenger. I don’t know why Johan holds the title of a senior water specialist. He could easily pretend to be an economist or a political scientist or even a philosopher.
In these ten years, I have had some special moments. One was my passionate call for An Inclusive World at the Nelson Mandela Benefit Dinner in Dubai. Sir Bob Geldof was the other speaker. Listening to him was a thrilling experience. As he finished his address, he came over and told me, “If only we can combine your content and my style, we will be very effective.” I remembered Geldof’s words several months later at a conclave of world leaders hosted by Bertelsmann Foundation on crisis of globalisation. Dr Henry Kissinger was in the audience. At the dinner that night, he came to me and said, “I have been thinking about your speech since morning. My name is Henry Kissinger. Can I have your business card please?” And there was this scenario planning workshop we organised for the Directorate General of Police of Maharashtra State, when D Sivanandhan, the chief, asked senior police officials from across districts of Maharashtra to come over Mumbai. As police officers got into intellectually stimulating discussion on the future of peace and conflict in the state, Sivanandhan told us that he had not experienced anything like this in his over 30 years of police service. It was also a privilege for us to assist the Directorate of Police in getting off the ground its annual counter terrorism seminar.
Strategic Foresight Group is very shy of the media. We don’t write op-eds in the newspapers. We don’t appear in television debates. Some 2000 newspapers and websites from 70-80 countries have mentioned our work but it is mostly about our ideas and analysis which are in the public domain. Of course, it feels nice when The Economist or International Herald Tribune quotes us – I would be a hypocrite to say otherwise but we don’t go out of our way to seek media attention. We have made an exception about Forbes India magazine, though. Indrajit Gupta, its chief editor, has accomplished something outstanding with his young team by turning this into India’s most innovative thought-provoking periodical. We collaborate with Forbes to produce Cover Essays from time to time out of our respect for them. The ones we have prepared so far (A manual of counter-terrorism, Credible India? and Future of the Middle East) have helped generate rich discourse in India.
It has been a privilege to interact with several Heads of Government. When we met Fidel Ramos, former President of the Philippines, he insisted on Ilmas writing something on his wall. I captured this in a photograph that has become quite popular. Carl Bildt, Swedish Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister, took away Big Questions of Our Time, a SFG publication we had presented him earlier for his summer holiday reading. Simon Peres was keen we read an article by Mikhail Gorbachev and was looking for it in his study, while we felt a bit ashamed to be sipping coffee ideally. While lost in a Senate building, I ran into Senator McCain who took me to Senator Joe Biden’s office whose staff wanted me to meet Senator Obama. Before long, the three Senators were allies and foes in the US elections – if only I had the “foresight”. This was one episode when SFG failed to get it right. Geremek, former Polish Foreign Minister, was our favourite leader – he was very inspiring and thought provoking but death claimed him too early.
Of these and other leaders we met, the most memorable was Pratibha Patil when she was President of India. Ilmas, I and Kumar Ketkar, eminent editor, met her at her official residence, Rashtrapati Bhawan, to invite her to inaugurate SFG conference on Responsibility to the Future. From there we went to a hotel in New Delhi to have a drink. Just as we poured beer in our glasses, Kumar’s phone rang. The President of India was inviting us for a breakfast next morning. A few more meetings followed at her residence, when we really got to know her. After the inauguration of our conference, as she stepped down, the security forces moved fast towards the big gate on the left of the Convocation Hall of the Mumbai University. But the President turned to her right to mingle with participants, creating confusion among security and protocol people. We had a tough time balancing between a leader who wanted to mix with people and officialdom concerned about the security drill.
If SFG has created anything that I consider most valuable over the last decade, it is memories and friendships - Jurgen Wickert and Hubertus von Welck of Naumann Stiftung of Germany, Frank Richter of Horasis with whom we produced the Malaysia scenarios; Ged Davis of World Economic Forum with whom we worked on India scenarios; Niaz Naik, former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan who unfortunately passed away ; Stein Tonnesson, Norwegian scholar; Maysoon Zoubi and Selim Catafago, top water ministry officials from Jordan and Lebanon; Salman Shaikh of UK who heads the Brookings Centre in Doha; his protégé while he was in the UN, Karma Ekmekji, Lebanon’s extremely intelligent, dynamic and astute future Foreign Minister; Hans Ekdahl, whose ideas helped us rethink India’s future; Yogesh Digambar, Bhimraj Bam and Kumar Ketkar who provide the local sounding board in Mumbai; and a host of Indian officials and leaders who are so many that if I name a few, others would get offended – all these names in addition to Graham Watson, Lord Alderdice, Prince Hassan, Yasar Yakis, Saban Disli, Thomas Greminger, Jean Daniel Ruch, Prince Turki, Hesham Youssef, Ephraim Sneh, Indrajit Gupta, Muenger, Gely remind me of some of the most inspiring moments. Their friendship is the treasure for which it was worth creating SFG. And of course, there is Mario Carera, a Swiss diplomat and a gentleman. A visit to Bern is incomplete without a dinner with Mario and Sybille, his wife, who I suspect was Miss Switzerland a few years ago.
In this journey of a decade that has seen us crafting new policy concepts like Cost of Conflict, Blue Peace, Bullock Cart Economy and creating new space between Track One and Track Two diplomacy around the world, Ilmas is the one who has built an institution that has endured, with her perseverance and unending optimism. She has benefitted from Shrikant’s advice, support and crisis management skills. Shrikant keeps oiling the wheels in his quiet and unassuming ways, besides supervising finances and administration.I can afford to fall sick, take leave, stay at home and read philosophy but Ilmas can’t. If she is absent for even one day, SFG comes to a standstill.
Somehow the researchers at SFG have been mostly young women though we select our team of about 20 researchers in an open competition. (Men are eligible to apply but lose out all the time in the competitive recruitment process.) Their ability to tackle hard political and security issues defies logic in the political mainstream where only gender related subjects are offered to women leaders and officials – of course there are exceptions like Hilary Clinton and Micheline Calmy Ray. I won’t be surprised if some of my young colleagues turn out to be famous persons. I have asked the accountant to preserve invoices with their signatures.
After telling such a long story, a short question remains unanswered. What precisely does SFG offer to the world? A recent experience of Julie Lindahl, Swedish author and a good friend of SFG helped me find the answer. Julie lives with Claes and her two children outside Stockholm in a semi-rural area. Last Christmas, she had put a lantern outside the house. One evening she heard a knock on the door. There was an adult Santa Claus and a child Santa Claus. Behind them there were many more Santa Claus look-a-likes. Julie did not know any of them. She soon realised that they were all holding lanterns and were attracted to Julie’s house because they saw a lantern there. In the darkness of the world’s northern end, a lantern attracts a lantern.
Strategic Foresight Group is not an ambitious organisation. It would never have been there had the Chinese dairy farmers not insisted on my visiting them on 9/11, 2001. It tries its best to be among the best in the world in its work. But basically, it is a simple organisation that merely holds a lantern in a world that can do with one more lantern, which can attract other lanterns. The only achievement of the SFG in the last ten years has been that this lantern has been able to notice light before the sunrise and spread a few rays of light at midnight.
