A forum that tries to make science more accessible and interesting

Tejal Kanitkar at VES College in Chembur. (Express Photo by Ganesh Shirsekar)

Written by Aleya Dutta Choudhury  

ON A humid Saturday afternoon, an eclectic mix of ‘science enthusiasts’ gathered in the ground floor auditorium of a suburban college in Chembur for what seemed like a regular science seminar, except it was not. By the time the group had settled for a talk on ‘The Science of Climate Change and its Challenge for India’, the auditorium was filled with talks about the current state of science, research and scientific temper in the country. A sense of concern hung among the attendees — scientists, engineers, students and professors — as Tejal Kanitkar, assistant professor from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, began to speak.

“The reality of climate change often gets buried under the rhetoric,” she said, alluding to the amount of hearsay that has spread about the issue. “To understand this problem, there needs to be a broad consensus that climate change is really happening,” she added.

Exploring India’s changing narrative on climate change, Kanitkar said: “As a developing country, in order to reach our full growth potential we need to utilise a fair amount of fossil fuels. At the same time, we have a certain responsibility to the environment that we must fulfill. To settle on the best solution is the government’s responsibility. Instead, they ( government) are being unscientific about it and submitting proposals, which say that yoga is the solution to climate change at global conferences.”

Kanitkar was speaking at the fifth edition of ‘Curiosity Circle’, a forum for science enthusiasts from all walks of life who come together to discuss and deliberate the state of science. On the second Saturday of every month, a public lecture on issues ranging from humanitarian to political aspects in the field of science brings together the scientific community and the public at large.

Now in its fifth edition, Curiosity Circle is a culmination of the ideas expressed at the ‘March for Science’ held last year when members of the scientific community protested against the fund cuts imposed on research and what they said the overall decline of scientific temperament. Last year’s march was followed by one last month with more intense protests against “increase in propagation of pseudoscientific ideas”.

“We blame ourselves because we never made it clear to people what science really is,” said M C Arunan, a professor at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. “Scientists hole up in their labs making discoveries and publishing papers and no one bothers to explain what it’s really all about. Now, we are faced with a solid sense of ignorance emanating from the people and the government,” said Arunan, who is one of the brains behind Curiosity Circle.

Curiosity Circle was born out of a need to address this gap — between public awareness and public interaction with the scientific community. These monthly meetings consist of a talk by a member of the scientific circle followed by an interactive session.” There has come a pressing need to defend science. The goal is to make science more accessible and interesting, so that people begin to appreciate it more,” said Avishek Sarbajna, one of the founding fellows and an IT professional.

For city-based data scientist Avinash Bharti and PhD scholar Safrin Begum from the Indian Institute of Population Sciences, platforms like Curiosity Circle offers them a holistic view of what science truly stands for. “Science must be viewed as a social entity. There should be more such fora where this view can be shared with people,” said Bharti.