Use vernacular languages to promote science: PM Modi’s message to scientists

Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (Express Photo by Prem Nath Pandey/Files)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged Indian scientists to use vernacular languages to promote science and technologies and develop a love for the stream among youths. Addressing the curtain-raiser ceremony of the commemoration of professor Satyendra Nath Bose’s 125th birth anniversary at S N Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences in Kolkata through video-conference, he said, “Professor Bose was a crusader for teaching of science in vernacular languages. He started the Bengali science magazine Gyan o Bigyan to promote understanding and love of 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.”

Born on January 1, 1894, 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.

The Prime Minister also asked Indian scientists to focus on innovations which will solve socio-economic problems of the country and positively impact lives. “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 reaches the people and address the socio-economic problems. You have to see whether through your innovations, life of the poor is getting easier, whether difficulties of middle class are reducing. So choose your subjects which will make all these changes,” the Prime Minister said.

He also urged the country’s scientists to engage themselves in collaborative works with scientists in other institutions and share their experiments. “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.