Prof. G.Haragopal: My task has been made a bit easy by Sheila, the previous speaker. I am entering this debate from a different vantage point.  Well all the presentations were the basic relation between knowledge and society and the way knowledge is generated and there was an emphasis on science and technology. Since I teach politics, I would talk something about “politics of knowledge”. I think Sheila made this point that there is under theorization of power as to how power is generated, how nation-state operates. I am starting from that point. And I have a feeling that while knowledge relating to nature has grown very fast - last two centuries witnessed tremendous innovations, developments both in science and more so in technology, but social knowledge as to how the society operates I think remained or lagged far behind. And therefore I find lop-sided growth in the knowledge itself and this lop-sided growth in knowledge has made the future of humanity very uncertain. And today being located in a Social Science discipline if somebody asks me about the future of the human kind, I think my insight into that would be as peripheral as of anybody because somewhere my knowledge system does not help me in comprehending the complexity of unfolding global reality.

I am presenting only one point because there is very short time. Now while science and technology which has grown essentially in the European and may be in US context is being globalised - be it movement of capital or movement of technology. Now during the last three or four decades, we find that globalization of knowledge of science and technology and it is moving from one be it Information Technology, be it Genomes, be it Genetics or be it Nano technology, whatever it be…and this movement of technology has made politics as somebody said – “knowledge is subordinated to the market forces” – I think this entire movement of science and technology has subordinated politics to technology and thereby making political processes techno-managerial and once the political processes become techno-managerial I think the crisis would be that while technology can solve certain basic needs of the humankind, but the type of relations into which human beings enter and the social arrangements that human beings innovate from time to time - they get into crisis and technology has no clue whatsoever to the crisis of the nature of social relations.

In a globalization process when you have highly developed technological systems in particular information technology, communication technology and trying to impose a particular model that emanated from the development of science and technology on societies which are absolutely weighed and so pluralistic and so different at stages of development and I think the present crisis is a crisis of imposing a model of development on all cultures which have evolved in history, located at different points of time and I find that there is a rupture between the nature of social relations and the way in which science and technology is aggressively expanding itself. This crisis to me, this rupture, is manifest in the violence, in the restlessness, and the type of economic crisis and breakdown of institutional arrangement and perhaps terrorism that we find in different parts of the world.

Now when there is terrorism I always say that while technology created a Bill Gates, it also created a Bin Laden. Now while we may have some understanding of Bill Gates how do we understand Bin Laden? What is his origin? Where from he has come? Why this terrorism and why human life is made so uncertain in the contemporary world? My way of understanding that is that the way social relations are breaking down and the way we are imposing a model of development, a global model of development – homogeneous or universalizing, totalizing model of development on humanity which is so diverse, so pluralistic, so different, and I think it is in that process the cultures and the people are not able to adjust to this highly aggressive science and technology, advancing science and technology and hence the crisis of the society.

Now where do we go from here? My own feeling is how do we generate knowledge? Now if you look at the global resources the way that they are allocated, the resources allocated to social science research are very meager. Even scientists, basic scientists are complaining about the shortage of resources to the case that the tragedy of the whole globe is that funds that come to social science research are so paltry, so short that today the best minds are not engaged in social science research. Now the problem of humanity is the problem of nature of relationships and the nature of relationships of human beings with the nature and the type of problem that science and technology keep on creating to the humanity which is not able to adjust then you need new knowledge.

Shiv was talking about the alternative imaginations. What is Indian imagination? Even if there was a historical possibility of some imagination emerging that is started that got completely impaired, the way that model of development entered into the life of Indian society where all of us are suddenly caught unaware with this model of development and we are fighting back this model of development itself saying that this model does not suit India.
 
But then, the model, the market forces have their own aggressive character and the knowledge – even if you are located in the domain of knowledge your intervention in the process is very marginal. I think that perhaps is the crisis which makes the future of the humanity very uncertain. I think this is the time one looks at the nature of human being and with what stuff human beings are made up of, what are the laws of human behavior, how institutions have evolved and what are the alternative ways and mechanisms through which human beings can cope with the nature of development. I think that is the central question and that perhaps is both – “knowledge of crisis is as important and the crisis of knowledge”. I will stop there and in the debate will be happy to respond. Thank you very much.