SN Bose birth anniversary: PM Modi urges scientists to use vernacular languages to promote science among youths

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the curtain-raiser ceremony for the commemoration of Professor Satyendra Nath Bose’s 125th birth anniversary in Kolkata through a video-conference. (Source: ANI)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged Indian scientists to use vernacular languages for promoting science and technology so that youths develop a love for the stream.

Addressing the curtain-raiser ceremony for the commemoration of Professor Satyendra Nath Bose’s 125th birth anniversary at SN Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences in Kolkata through a video-conference, Modi said, “Professor Bose was a crusader for teaching of science in vernacular languages. His started the Bengali science magazine ‘Gyan o Bigyan’ to promote understanding and love for science in our youth. It is vital that we promote science communication in a big way. Language should not be a barrier but a facilitator in this term.”

ALSO READ: Who is Satyendra Nath Bose?

The PM also asked the scientists to focus on innovations that will solve the socio-economic problems of the country and make a positive impact on the lives of people. “It will be unjust for the people of the country if their achievements and innovations get confined within the boundaries of laboratories. Their hard work will receive its true reward when their innovations will reach the masses and make positive changes in their lives. Today it is imperative that our innovations and the final outcome of our research work should reach the people and address the socio-economic problems. You have to see whether through your innovations the life of any poor is getting easier, whether difficulties of the middle-class are reducing. So, choose your subjects that will make all these changes,” Modi said.

He further urged the country’s scientists to collaborate with their fellow counterparts in other institutions to reach their true potential. “For one reason or another we have confined ourselves into isolation. We hardly cooperate, corroborate and share our experiments with fellow scientists in other institutions and national laboratories. To reach our true potential and to take Indian science to its rightful glory, we should be like a quantum particle that escapes its confinement. This is more important today as science becomes hugely multi-disciplinary and requires concentrated efforts,” he said.

Modi then went on to list the various infrastructural developments his government was undertaking to shore up the science and technology sector. “Our science departments are now working on multipronged approaches. Our portal is being developed for sharing scientific infrastructure that would allow transparent and efficient tagging and sharing or resources. Our mechanism is being put up for strong collaborations between academic and R&D institutions. City-based R&D Clusters are being created to bring together all science and technology partners from academia to institutes and to industries to start ups. The success of these efforts will depend on our ability to bring all institutions and labs under this strategy. The mechanism should ensure that a scientist from the remotest corner of the country has seamless access to resources.”

Physicist SN Bose is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s. Bose discovered what is known as bosons and worked with Albert Einstein to define one of the two basic classes of subatomic particles.