When will India get its Neil deGrasse Tysons to stand up?

First, a short introduction to the Indian science academies for those who need it...

By rights, they should need no introduction — because they constitute fellowships of a part of the most productive Indian scientists. But as everyone is fond of saying, Indian science does tend to lock itself up in a tall and inaccessible ‘ivory tower’, perhaps due to no fault of any single person or entity. Let us just say there are many factors responsible for this phenomenon. Anyway, this leads to the strange result of a mere journalist having to introduce these bodies to several keen readers. Preamble done.

 

 

The National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) is the oldest of the three academies. It was established in 1930, and its founding president was none other than Meghnad Saha (of Saha ionization equation fame). It is centred in Allahabad. The Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc) registered as a society in 1934, was founded by CV Raman in Bengaluru. The third, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) was established in 1935, and is presently based in Delhi. It was first located in Kolkata and its first president was L.L. Fermor.

The societies are distinct bodies with their own constitutions but concur and many times co-operate in their aims and efforts to spread the culture of science in the country. They have a body of Fellows, nominated from among the scientists who do the best research in the country, and the academies also award scientists for exemplary work. They also publish journals and organise educational programmes such as summer projects for students.

While there are meetings organised annually for the Fellows, the academies had not until now moved on to the position of advising people at large on the benefits or problems of scientific and technological advancements. Now they seem to have reached a composition that wills this.

 

Indian science academies are starting to realise that with their membership running into the thousands, including top scientists in the country, they not only can scientifically, independently and objectively advise the nation, but that they perhaps, in fact, ought to.

 

Recently, the IASc has started two initiatives to interact with the public at large — an online peer-reviewed journal named Dialogue and a website named Confluence where anyone can post their views on matters related to science and society, and it would be displayed after a due moderation process. Almost as a continuation of this, the IASc and The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai (IMSc) got together to organise a discussion meeting for scientists and science journalists — to meet and confer on science and society. One would expect that this was potent combination for the fireworks to fly, and they did, but not until after the meeting, when various journalists and scientists put down their observations of thoughts expressed during the meeting.

It has been instructive to watch these ideas flying back and forth, but somewhere a feeling of incompleteness results. Of course, a conference on any topic would be incomplete to some degree, I am not talking about that kind of incompleteness. This is an incompleteness in the discussions which focussed more on the conference itself and not what it aimed to bridge and assess whether it succeeded.

Looking at the series of initiatives — Dialogue, Confluence and now the meeting — it appears that the paradigm of the scientists in the ivory tower is shifting, or at least, that there is an attempt on the part of one academy of scientists to change this paradigm and step in for a discussion. I have no second thoughts on this — it is an attempt that must be lauded and encouraged — but it must be discussed, too.

One thought that stood out clearly in my mind was that the IASc is finally expressing a desire to mingle with the people, and contribute to building a perception of science and a better understanding of it among the general populace of our society which normally may remain untouched by the goings on inside the labs. Where better than to start a discussion with science journalists who have a foot in the two — albeit weakly, at the moment — connected worlds of science and the public at large?

If you see this workshop and the aforementioned initiatives (Dialogue and Confluence) in conjunction with joint statements made in the press by the three academies (INSA, NASI, IASc) about, for instance, the reality of evolution, and it appears that the academies have acquired the critical mass for them to really begin to play that role that many of us really wanted them to play — a role similar to that of their American counterpart, the National Academy of Science of the U.S., which is a “private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars” that advises the U.S. independently and objectively on matters pertaining to science and technology.

 

 

In the discussion meeting, as professor K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, pointed out, the Indian academies have not historically adopted this role, unlike the American NAS which had it in its mandate right from the word go. But it appears they are starting to realise that with their membership running into the thousands, including top scientists in the country, they not only can scientifically, independently and objectively advise the nation, but that they perhaps, in fact, ought to.

Can the Indian academies do this? In my opinion, certainly. But I also think they need to scrutinise themselves under a somewhat harsh light.

Consider this: The website of the NAS (U.S) boasts nearly 500 Nobel Laureates among its members (past and present). As an answer to this, the Indian academies can definitely say that they have membership of scientists who have won the best awards and recognitions in their peer group. But look at the programmes conducted by the NAS (U.S.) and their publications — they outdo the Indian academies in sheer variety and scope. They have a whole page on their website devoted to “Issues” in science and technology, which comments on stuff like Nuclear power, Climate, etc.

How did NAS (U.S.) manage this? I guess not merely by recruiting Nobel laureates. Their membership and associations need to be looked at carefully. They partner with groups having experience in communication and grassroots work. And this partnership is not merely “outsourcing”. For, even if they have other, outside bodies doing the work of analysing documents and framing them, for instance, about climate change, they must have insiders who understand them so that they can effectively partner the study. They must have members who understand and are interested in being bridges that connect science to society.

 

 

In the Indian context, things are somewhat different, and the challenges faced by science are totally different. Science is even more removed from a bulk of the population and the need for social interface between science academies and society at large, and not just the English-speaking strata. Do the Indian Science academies have such scientists among their Fellows who have experience working with people outside the research circuit on matters of science? It seems to me it is only with such leadership that these institutions can make a meaningful contribution.

To briefly go back to the discussion meeting, Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, spoke of the attitude towards scientists who engage in social activity (basically, activity other than producing papers, teaching and such work that directly contributes to building up the scientific discipline). He himself writes many popular science articles and has faced deprecatory comments: “You have retired and so you have time for this,” for instance.

He was mildly berating the community for this attitude and pointing out the value of people doing this balancing act between work that is strictly academic and those that add to the well-being of the community at large, even if they may not directly feed into one’s academic credentials.

Amid such prejudices, Indian science academies may not be able to achieve the critical composition that would help them explode into opinion-shapers. This has to be dealt with.

The nature of the change required is much more than can be achieved by starting blogs and such interfaces which in the language of science are but perturbative interventions and not quite disruptive in the real sense. A more inclusive Fellowship, among other things, may well do the trick.