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This paper is provoked by a recent book by Ashok Parthasarthy, one of our eminent science policy analysts, called 'Technology at the core'and

draws on discussion in the KICS forum, which seeks to ask, whether there is a chance of democracy playing a role in S&T policy making. Can democracy instead of technology be at the core of policy?
There seems to be an unwritten code which keeps Science and Technology as the privy of a small group of politicians and scientists. Historically the Prime Minister has always held the Science & Technology portfolio, and the big three Departments of Atomic Energy, Space, Defence Research (DRDO), are generally protected from public scrutiny, and their budgets are passed even without much debate in the Parliament.

What is more worrying is that there is very little internal democracy within these scientific institutions. So the question is why is science in India not open to democratic control?

We started of with the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SACC), which had no full time staff and minimal impact on the S & T policy. The SACC was replaced by the Committee on Science and Technology (COST) in 1968. A National Committee on Science and Technology (NCST) was established in 1971. The attempt was to have an integrated plan for S & T and link it to the five year plan. The approach papers divided the 24 sectors. They had 233 working groups and a phenomenal 2000 scientists actually got involved in the making of this document. It was also open for public discussions. This kind of an exercise never happened in science policy in India again. There were some tensions between the NCST and the Planning Commission and that was one of the reasons why the recommendations of the NCST never really got implemented. And when the term of NCST got over, there was probably the feeling whether there was the need for the NCST at all, and it was allowed to lapse. And then The Science Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SACC) was restored in 1981. In addition, there is a Cabinet Committee on Science and Technology.

So, was the NCST effort (to have a large consultative process for deciding S & T plans) an aberration in Science Policy in India? Perhaps; we get some insight from Ashok Parthasarathy’s book. For example there is a lot of debate on nuclear power in the book and in NCST as well. He says the atomic energy establishment was clear that NCST can't decide nuclear power. The nuclear lobby insisted that it had the sole claim to competence on its own claims, something, that the NCST was not willing to accept. Mind you, this is the nature of dialogue among the scientists. There was no civil society at all involved there.

The debate never really played up and this tension between the scientific elite on one hand and the Planning Commission was never really resolved. If these tensions had been played out, probably we would have had a resolution in five years or ten years. But that never happened because since then the scientific elite have become more and more powerful. There is no attempt to discuss issues on science even internally.

This is the broad context and we tried this very small exercise to look at the 11th Plan and examine how the S & T component fits within it. Is it out of sync with the other sectors? If yes why is this so? Basically we have tried to see what the civil society’s role in the 11th Plan is. We did an analysis of steering committee, the constitutions of all the committees and compared it with the S and T policy. The exercise is not complete, but we are testing the assumption of whether there is an unwritten code in policy-making circles as far as S&T policy is concerned namely that civil society involvement may be good for health, agriculture, empowerment of SC/STs and those kinds of issues. But leave the domain of S & T to the experts. Civil Society better not come here. In this context then, can democracy ever be at the core of science policy making in India

The XIth plan has working groups, steering committees, sub groups, task forces, etc. What is interesting is that out of 106 working groups, (these groups usually have the advantage of having expertise from outside the ministry and broader society), Science and Technology had none. Science and technology had some sub groups and task forces but it does not appear that there was much representation from outside the scientific establishment.

Basically the S & T policy appears to be out of sync with the rest of the planning process.
We are able to get a very broad conclusion from this figure- so we did an analysis -I will not go into details. Most of these groups are full of secretaries of various ministries. We tried to look closely at the non-official members and with regard to S&T we realized that one of them was the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, a rather big NGO set up by an established scientist. There is no space for views of other civil society organizations involved in science. We also tried looking at the Terms of Reference of the Xth and XIth plans under S&T. The Xth plan had Abdul Kalam as the Chairman and reflects a high technical mindset. The trend continues except that the SAC (Scientific Advisory Council) has now been replaced by TIFAC (Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council.

Finally, I would like to pose this question. If the NCST is reconstituted and if we were to attempt even this as a minimum requirement of democratisation or transparency of Science and Technology Policy, what would such a body look like today? How would civil society fit into it? Will it deal with the issues differently from Abdul Kalam? Trends seem to suggest that it will take a long time for the S & T policy to become democratic or even address issues relating to democracy.

I am hopeful however of a social science fiction. If someone like Shiv (why not Shiv himself!) could write the next “House of Bamboo” (an excellent social science fiction) on how civil society can relate to issues in science and technology in the future, it probably will inspire some groups. May be that’s the answer.

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