Knowledge, democracy and science policy: The missing dialogue In globalised India
Shambu Prasad – Rural Management, Xavier Institute of Management.

To reflect a little bit on the Indian condition, I will speak a little on the recognition of the new techno scientific promise, and the possibilities of collective experimentation in the Indian context. What I might be speaking may not have too much to do with innovation per se.  In fact perhaps the most innovative thing I have done with regard to this is to change my title last night. So, it’s now called, “Are we Aryabhatta’s children - reclaiming India’s Innovative Traditions”.
Why Aryabhatta’s  Children? –In the Indian context there is this extremely strong and empowering imagination of the Knowledge Society, as expressed by our ex-president, Dr Abdul Kalaam, the conjurer of dreams and technological promises. He titles his book: “Aryabhatta’s children, why science will transform India in the 21 century”!

But this follows a series of visions that he has propounded on the “2020 Vision” by which time India would became a developed nation. Almost in current media style, like ‘20-20 cricket, we are supposed to be moving into this notion of a developed nation.  The point I want to make is that I, the selective reconstruction of India’s innovative traditions by the scientific elite, has only sought to reinforce, the regime of techno-scientific promises, ignoring other genealogies of India’s scientific trajectory and other imaginations.  If we are to create a currently missing dialogue between Knowledge, Democracy and Science Policy in India, we need to question this particular genealogy and reclaim public spaces in science and put forth alternative visions.

I would like to start with the example of something that happened recently, as the prevalence of this techno scientific mindset. The Prime Minister recently gave the Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar Awards which is a very recognised kind of awards for scientific excellence. During the giving of the awards; the media reports were that he spoke about the need for Science and Technology (S&T) inputs to counter terrorism. This was coming a couple of weeks after the Mumbai blasts and the terror attacks. He was obviously disturbed by the terror attacks and the media frenzy that followed it. The only irony was that the theme of the session was on “Science and Technology and Innovation for Rural Development”. So, while the scientific elite in India continues its package technological promises for public consumption, it is content practicing selective amnesia. Failed scientific expertise earlier this year had caused one of India’s biggest natural disasters due to floods, due to the failure of the embankments that was recommended by scientific expertise on the river Kosi. Millions of rural Indians were affected and yet the government refused to accept responsibility, for the recommendations it made, despite repeated reminders by civil society and publicly engaged scientists of the kind of misplaced choices that were made.

This is not an isolated instance. A similar instance occurred closer to the place where I live. There was an error in safety in the release of the Hirakud Dam waters in Orissa, and then it caused extensive damage which was never ever acknowledged. You can have a case where scientific expertise gone awry has never been publicly acknowledged.
We probably don’t know at any point in time how much money was spent on the super computer exercise which C.N.R.Rao and others had led. They gave us this vision, we pumped in a huge amount of dollars. We have never seen one instance of the scientific elite saying, “yes we probably made a mistake”. But there are mistakes that are continuing to be made. But that’s the power of the scientific elite, we need to counter when we speak about futures.

The Prime Minister of course spoke about the three fold increase in allocation to S&T in the 11th Plan. A policy decision that would probably more in keeping with the Lisbon Agenda for the EU (3% of the GDP on R&D). We are not quite there. We are probably less than 1% -- but it’s trying to suggest that - we are increasing it three times. What is not said though, is the fact that the S&T Plan was arguably the least consultative of all the Plans for the 11th Plan. While other sections of the 11th Plan at least had inputs from Civil Society through working groups, the S&T process had none .  I think this is the point that in a sense Sunil was saying that the logic of policy making for science and technology seems to be very different from the rest of the sectors of the economy or the society that we speak of. It was a plan by the scientific elite for the scientific elite with little semblance to any dialogue, discussions or consultations. Not surprising considering that in India, the big three - Department of Space, Atomic Energy and DRDO (Defense Research Development Organization) consume over 60 to 70% of all the S&T project resources without any kind of parliamentary scrutiny even if you understand Parliament to be associated to the democracy.

So the basic point is that the S&T process in India is completely out of sync with the planning process in India.  India’s external claim to be the world’s fastest growing democracy is with regard to this history of non-democratic policy making decision.

Where does India stand with regard to some of the European knowledge society debates.
If the problem as has been identified in the European Union context is of having public unease with science, in India it will be much more with “civil society’s unease with science policy”. In Europe there is at least an awareness of risk, Indian science policy that includes Aryabhatta’s Children promotes a certain kind of naive certainty. Risk is completely absent from the discourse.

Scientific certitude is dominant. One of our friends who interviewed some of these people making these decisions, was surprised by the notion of risk was completely non-existing in the way science policy is promoted in India.

If Science is seen as a servant of innovation, in Europe- In India of course there is this tenuous link between development and violence which we don’t want to try and recognize. If we speak of science as governance, and risk governance which, I think Brian and others have been speaking of, in India “science for governance” is translated as or reduced to this notion of e-governance. There is a huge amount of hype about innovation, which I won’t go into in detail here, but it’s very much seen in the language of number of patents and products or  the. IT-BT success, where India is seen as the  new R & D capital of  intellectual coolies. R & D is not seen as any notion of collective experimentation and diversity and plurality have been ignored.

But the point I would like to briefly suggest here is that an alternative reading of Indian science is possible and it should be engaged with if you want to imbue many of these things with alternative meanings.

There have been traditions of collective experimentation.  The other view of innovation that European debates on Knowledge society speaks of, but it’s rarely spoken of, or recognized. Some of it is there in Gandhi’s views on science and the notion of scientific practice. So we can almost find the parallel between the 1933 Chicago motto which is quoted here of ‘science invents, industry applies, and society conforms’.  At the same time probably at around 1933 and 1934 we have the Gandhian idea and the Khadi movement, trying to suggest an alternative view point led by civil society where   society is not conforming, but trying to engage practitioners in the collective experimentation exercise. Civil society was not seen as the downstream innovation activity but one where the direction of innovation was socially shaped. We should not forget that the Charaka prize, perhaps most of the prizes for innovation preceeding the Bhatnagar prize after independence, seems to represent a totally different kind of dynamic. There are quite a few unfinished possibilities due to these experiments but  they have got kind of marginalized not just by the scientific establishment, but also by the social science discourse on the scientific establishment.

Sheshadri’s work on bio-technology --unfortunately he passed away much earlier than, what might have been an extremely interesting promise. It seemed to suggest a totally different kind of contract between civil society the state and the private sector, a model of public-private partnership which perhaps needs revisiting. I would probably suggest that the science policy can be a death knell for creativity and diversity, especially because of the undemocratic and non-participatory processes that exist in India.

I just take a very quick example of the System of the Rice Intensification (SRI). The fact that the system of Rice Intensification was outside civil society( it was a grassroots innovation, emerging from civil society, had no official kind of sanction and hence there was no policy to promote it,) allowed for tremendous  diversity amongst the different kinds of states.

But once the policy was in place it started putting the same kind of straight jacket and there are some difficulties with that. But we have a situation here, where the big states including Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, (and this is what we were deliberating in few months back, a month back in the national symposium) seemed to have extremely big egos, and refused to learn, while collective learning has created immense possibilities in small states like Tripura, Orissa, and many of the rain fed regions.

I would also suggest that the open source in the Indian context is not just about IT.  Indians have been following democratization of science even before the IT boom. Some of the principles of open source need to be extended beyond the IT or BT into other fields. You can’t have open innovation without a perestroika or the glastnost of the scientific establishment.
 
I think one of the major problems which we are dealing with is the fact that internal democracy is almost non-existent with the scientific establishments today. There are no spaces or forums to discuss, voice concerns or unease. There is still a lot of talent at what we were discovering the work on System of Rice Intensfication. But, there is no avenues to express or  they are forced to express in tune with the imaginations of the scientific elite. I would suggest that we need other icons than Kalaam, Narayan Murthy (Infosys) and others. And we need to seek those from within and learn from similar quest elsewhere.  

I would like to conclude by giving an example of an extremely interesting icon, which I think India should probably adopt more enthusiastically and this is from Columbia known more for its drug cartel and other kinds of things. But it demonstrates the potentiality of the south-south learning that we should probably invest in.  This is of a person called Orlando Rincon, who started of as a communist, very much like Narayan Murthy at one point in time. But over a period of a time he got his education and other things. He wanted to do something, and he actually came to India, because India was a global leader in IT. So he had this question what model would allow Columbia to grow economically without compromising values of justice and equity That he was very firmly committed to?

He came to India but he kind of found a new form of slavery and the forced Americanization of the workers, which he found here with regard with IT sector. So he went back to Ireland, he found more friends in Ireland, but didn’t find his model there. He then  said that the Columbians had to build on their ingenuity and capacity to stimulate innovations.  He setup this IT software company called ParqueSoft, and I will not get into the details of it, but the imagination there is what I think we need to content with.

So, ParqueSoft was setup as a non-profit innovation park, that draws budding software enthusiasts from poor communities.  And it’s now a case on social entrepreneurship and that’s how I accidentally came across this case.  But, what’s interesting is the objective of this particular enterprise, it says it’s objective is “to stimulate democracy in social justice, using science and technology as a vehicle through the inclusion of the previously marginalized young people living in low income countries”.
The question I would like to raise and end is where are these kinds of innovative Orlando Ricons in India? Do we want more Narayan Murthy’s and Ramalinga Raju’s or entrepreneurs of the open system of the parquesoft?  The question really is, do we want to be Aryabhatta’s children of the Kalam type or not? Thank you.