On Knowledge in Civil Society (KICS)
by Shambu Prasad
by Shambu Prasad
Very briefly, the Knowledge in Civil Society is a dialogue forum, for academicians, clinicians and activist from civil society. It started two years back as a science and technology group and the main idea was to try and address a perceived need from civil society organisations. In their discussions relating to science and technology they were often branded as anti- science and anti- development. On the other hand we have this growing discipline of science studies of which Central University is now an important player in India where questions on how science & technology in society relations play out in the India
n context are being examined. So the idea was to see if we could provide a
common space where broadly speaking these two groups of actors comes together
and we started it out as a discussion forum which then led to a goggle group and
then a larger group and then an e-group. The interesting thing about the
Knowledge in Civil Society is that right from the start the Centre for World
Solidarity that has been supporting this initiative, has made it very clear that
it is not a Centre for World solidarity initiative alone - so the idea is to see
that they provide the space - it could be taken up in various other places and
various other formats as well. So even the name, the ideas, everything is
undergoing a kind of transformation. We started out as a science and technology
group and with suggestion of Central University of Hyderabad it became the
Knowledge and Civil Society Forum. I will speak about it more a little later-
there are about 40 members in this group and there is also a sub group on
sustainable agriculture and a few mechanisms. This workshop is based on
discussions we had earlier in the Knowledge and Civil Society forum.
First a little bit about the Knowledge and Civil Society. To mention briefly, it is a dialogue forum for civil society practitioners and academics. The idea is to try and see if we could incorporate some of the critiques of Science and Technology arising from civil society as well as academics. Not in a stand of trying to be what has been seen as anti-science but in a frame that would present an alternate conception of the relationship of knowledge and democracy. It started out with a few discussions amongst 10-15 people and the group is a continuously evolving group. Some of these discussions were first done largely through email because it is a de-centered group it is based in Hyderabad but it is an open space for civil society in India and even abroad. We actually have one or two members from Netherlands.
The general body meets once in six months and this is as good as the general body as most of members are here. And one of the discussions that happened during these meetings was that we should try and probably have some sessions where either some of the members of the Knowledge in Civil Society are well versed with and try and get them to speak at length. And this is what we called a sharing and learning forum and broadly sharing sessions and in the last one year we had seven sharing sessions- starting with Sreekumar who spoke to us on the Prayas experience in the power sector and the latest one was by Sagar Dhara who spoke to us on the issue of climate change. All these have been extremely rich presentations and we hope to bring them out in some sort of a book. Some of these sharing sessions were actually presentations that we shared for the first time in the group. So that is one of the activities of the knowledge in civil society forum.
The other activity has been to organise a few thematic workshops. One of them last December was on the concern on the Indo -US debate on knowledge initiative on agriculture. While the nuclear deal was being discussed considerably by the media the knowledge initiative on agriculture was not. So there was a strong response - a strong request from Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, KICS along with the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture and CWS organised this knowledge initiative on agriculture. Again as we are an evolving forum we moved on to also try and put together experiences on policy issues and this workshop is essentially one in continuation of these thematic workshops.
Just yesterday we got news that we have a new website. Thanks to the efforts of Walter and his friends at Centre for Education and Documentation (CED). Our website is an attempt to present thoughts and deliberations of the members of KICS forum. In fact most of the workshop papers are posted here and we hope we can continue to update the information in this way so this can be a space for individuals staying in different parts of the country and abroad.
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