Citation
Ghosal, A. (1999), "Silver Jubilee of the Society of Management Science and Applied Cybernetics, New Delhi.", Kybernetes, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/k.1999.06728cab.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1999, MCB UP Limited
Silver Jubilee of the Society of Management Science and Applied Cybernetics, New Delhi.
Silver Jubilee of the Society of Management Science and Applied Cybernetics, New Delhi (India)
The Society of Management Science and Applied Cybernetics (SOMAC) celebrated its Silver Jubilee by holding a Conference at the premises of the International Management Institute, New Delhi, on January 12 and 13, 1998. The Society was conceived by a group of intellectuals comprising scientists, economists, engineers, bureaucrats, technocrats, etc. who viewed that problems of a developing country like India were of a complex nature and could not always be tackled by algorithmic methods prescribed in classical statistics, economics, engineering, etc.; accordingly a cybernetic-cum-systems approach was called for. Thus the Society was founded in 1972; the Silver Jubilee Conference was due to be celebrated in 1997 but, due to some logistic reasons, it was postponed by a few months.
The SJ Conference was inaugurated by Dr Arjun Sengupta, a noted economist, a Member of India's Planning Commission and presided over by the Vice-President of SOMAC (also Member, Planning Commission) Prof. S.R. Hashim the President Dr N.K. Sengupta was away in London and could not attend the Conference. There were 25 participants from India and five from various other countries. Notable foreign participants were: Prof. Brian Garner and Dr N.S. Kutti from Deakin University, Australia; Mr Raja Ghosal from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia; Prof. Mahesh Chandra from Hofstra University, USA all of whom presented seminal papers.
While inaugurating the Conference and giving an invited speech as the Chief Guest, Dr Arjun Sengupta congratulated the Society on its completion of 25 years and efforts towards promotion of cybernetic approach in complex decision making in various facets of life. He described in a nutshell how some of the cybernetic concepts had been incorporated while framing the Ninth Plan for India. It was not enough to prescribe a stipulated rate of growth (in terms of GDP in real terms), say 6 or 7 per cent per annum, but it was also imperative that the quality of life in the coming years or the first quarter of the twenty-first century be visualized. The projection of the future for any country is complicated by factors of uncertainty, unforeseen events and turbulent situations prevailing in various parts of the world. A cybernetic approach makes us realize interdependence among nations, various sectors of economy, and social factors in the problems of growth in industry and agriculture. The new Information Age and latest generations of super-computers help us in building various scenarios for future.
Prof. S.R. Hashim (Vice-President) and Prof. A. Ghosal (Founder-Secretary) also talked about the importance of cybernetics in planning, management and different aspects of decision making in real life. In fact the future course of events is dictated by a rational prediction of the implications of various decisions. An event or a vital decision made in the First World has its impact on remote parts of the Third World and vice versa.
The first invited address of the Conference was delivered by Prof. Brian Garner who talked about "Dynamic knowledge modelling for national resource planning". He covered a wide spectrum in his address, stressing that "future scenarios are determined by current policy decisions, and goals and relationships may be inferred from explicit policy statements". In the information age there is always a possibility of getting too much information; however, how knowledge is modelled for tackling various problems involving complexity and uncertainty was the key question.
Interesting papers on energy and environment scenarios for India were presented by L.P. Rai and Sandhya Wadikar; Dutta Majumdar and Bhattacharya presented a multimodal medical image processing system for diagnosis and therapy planning; Chandra talked about expert decision systems. Raja Ghosal presented his research on the role of cybernetics in computer network. Sabharwal presented a stochastic model for costing health insurance. Arther Ramer's paper was presented in his absence by Raja Ghosal. A. Ghosal gave an invited paper on "Second order cybernetics"; he commented that the world is governed by second order cybernetics, because the observer or the policy maker had a crucial role in shaping the future; individual perceptions of complex dynamic systems went a long way in forming an implementable policy. A. Banik and P. K. Bhaumik of the International Management Institute contributed on the applications of cybernetics in economics and management.
The SJ Conference of the Society was partially financed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India.
A. Ghosal