AIPSN brief to the political parties for consideration in their election manifesto

AIPSN brief to the political parties for consideration in their election manifesto

Click here to read the pdf of the AIPSN brief for Political Parties

28 Mar 2024

AIPSN brief to the political parties for consideration in their election manifesto

The All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN) – a platform of people’s science movements across the country has the following positions on various critical issues e.g., propagation of scientific temper, S&T policy and process, Environment and Water resources, Health and Agriculture. As the country gears up for the 18th General Election, we would like to present these positions to be considered for inclusion in the electoral manifesto of the secular, democratic political parties of the country.

  1. On Scientific Temper

Article 51A (h) of the Constitution of India speaks of the duty of citizens to promote scientific temper. Recently, new challenges have emerged in the country in the form of strong socio-political narratives, backed by the State power, that seek to oppose any scientific approach, evidence-based reasoning or, indeed, any perspective that acknowledges universal scientific knowledge. We demand:

  • Promote the separation of State apparatus from religion.
  • Promotion and support of campaigns for popularization of science and its methods, and for promotion of scientific temper, evidence-based reasoning and critical thinking.
  • Reversal of the present government’s various methods and measures to undermine scientific temper, critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning in governance, education and among the wider public
  • Reconstitution of text-book committees to reverse the present. government’s anti-science revision of NCERT textbooks so as to promote critical thinking among students; re-write these textbooks to address deletion of Darwin’s theory of evolution and various chapters/ sections on India’s natural resources, forests, environment, mineral resources etc, and rectify the distorted picture of ancient Indian civilization projected in these texts.
  • A thorough revision of the now compulsory UG/PG Courses and reading material on so-called “traditional Indian knowledge systems;” revise teaching material for new optional Courses on Science, Technology and other Knowledge Systems in Ancient and Medieval India based on the vast body of historical evidence-based material already available on the subject.
  • Correction of the unscientific view being projected in educational institutions and among the wider public of imaginary achievements in S&T in ancient India, and the primacy and superiority of only one stream of cultural-religious-linguistic knowledge, as against the diverse sources and streams of knowledge in the Indian civilization including bi-directional exchanges with other civilizations for a true picture of the growth of science.
  • Restoration of autonomy of academic and research Institutions in both natural and social sciences; pay due regard to research/survey-based data as basis for evidence-based policy-making; correct retrospective manipulation of data to suit ideological narratives; defend and restore academic freedom and pluralism of opinion in universities and research institutes; restore the confidence of the people in scientific institutions
  • Strict monitoring and regulation of the dissemination of “magical remedies,” pseudo-science and superstitious beliefs through commercial activities and in the media, including through Anti-Superstition legislation in the Centre and States.
  • Resumption of population census driven public policy framing.
  1. On Science and Technology (S&T)
  • Enhancement of public funding of indigenous research in S&T to at least 2 per cent of GDP, with due importance to basic research.
  • Strengthening of the university system in research and development (R&D).
  • Decentralization of systems and processes for research funding; scrap the highly centralized National Research Foundation (NRF) set up under the NEP, which also burdens State governments without according to them equitable participation in decision-making; enhance research in state-level universities and collaborations with Central universities and national S&T institutions.
  • Allocation of funds for state-level initiatives for S&T interventions to tackle people’s problems e.g. drought, water resource management, rural livelihoods, issues faced by marginalized communities.
  • Provision of requisite mission-mode R&D funding for identified sectors of the “4th Industrial Revolution” such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), bio- and nano-technology etc towards self-reliance in advanced technologies expected to dominate the “knowledge era,” but in which India is in danger of being left behind in pursuit of externally-dependent and false “atma-nirbharta”; also focus on agricultural research to break monopolies of MNCs and enable climate-resilient agriculture/horticulture.
  • Increase in number of research fellowships especially for first generation students; increase number of faculty research positions in institutes; increase quality and quantity of PhDs in which India lags behind.
  • Systematic measures to increase participation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) research and jobs
  • Initiation of measures to reduce bureaucratism in S&T Institutions, and encourage academic freedom and culture of research towards reversing brain drain; reverse current trend of sycophancy, fear and discouragement of pluralism in universities and research institutes.
  • Regulation of AI, genetic engineering, data-mining and IT-based surveillance so as to ensure the public good.
  • Review of decision to close down many government-funded S&T Institutions; resuming government support for a restructured Indian Science Congress.
  • Promote free and open source software (FOSS) and other new technologies, free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents; “knowledge commons” to be promoted across disciplines e.g. like biotechnology, AI and drug discovery.
  • Recognition of digital infrastructure as public infrastructure to be used for public good.
  • Investment in public communication networks and free knowledge access to scientific and other academic publications without copyright barriers.
  • Ensuring all public funded research is made accessible to all.
  • Rigorous double-blind clinical trials with publication of data for open review for approval of new medicines, vaccines etc.

 

  1. Environment

Various dilutions of regulatory provisions for environmental protection have taken place in the recent past that would have serious impact on our natural resources and climate and will affect people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. There will have to be reversals of these changes. The specific demands are the following:

 

  • The system and processes of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Clearances at State and Central level be made effective, time-bound, transparent, accountable, and free of conflict of interests. EIA is to be conducted preferably through an independent Environmental Protection Agency; repeal EIA Notification 2020 and issue revised guidelines.
  • Economy-wide measures be planned and initiated to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the UNFCCC framework as applicable to developing countries, through effective policies, regulation, de-carbonization, energy efficiency in all sectors of production and consumption, while providing for a just transition from fossil fuels; promotion of renewable energy such as solar and wind; reducing energy inequality and promoting energy access for economically weaker sections such as in public transport; India’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) required to be submitted to UNFCCC in 2025 to be re-cast through a participatory process involving all stakeholders.
  • A National Adaptation Plan (NAP) should be evolved through a participatory process involving all stakeholders especially States to tackle climate impacts such as on agriculture, extreme rainfall and related landslides and urban flooding, heat waves and urban heat islands, coastal erosion and sea-level rise; streamline systems to tackle natural and climate-related disasters; evolve and implement climate resilient development strategies especially addressing the needs of vulnerable populations; provide adequate funds from the Centre and build capabilities of States and local governance structures for the above.
  • Sustainable and environment/climate-friendly development strategies should be evolved for the fragile Himalayan region and eco-sensitive regions of Western Ghats and the North-East; undertake comprehensive review of infrastructure development and urbanization in hill areas, especially in the Western Himalayan region.
  • Thoroughly revise National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) towards rapid and goal-oriented reduction of air pollution in urban areas especially through promotion of public mass transportation in preference to personal vehicle use, and effective regulation of polluting industries and construction activities; strengthen Central and State regulatory authorities.
  • Urgently initiate measures to prevent degradation and destructive development of riverbeds and flood plains, including in urban areas.
  • Undo different provisions of the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, apart from the modified definition of Forests struck down by the SC, especially 100 km from international boarder and LAC/LOC being exempt from any regulatory measure; ensure protection of rights of tribals and other forest dwellers under Forest Rights Act, 2006.
  • Repeal provisions of biodiversity Amendment Act 2023 which permits transfer of knowledge regarding bio-diversity resources to corporate without permission of National biodiversity Authority, and also denies local communities of due compensation or share of these benefits.
  • Scrap the environmentally disastrous and pro-corporate islands Development Plan for Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep Island chains, without due consultation with local population in Lakshadweep, and endangering the tiny remaining populations of mostly isolated tribes in the Andamans; re-examine feasibility and location of proposed naval base in A&N.
  • Scrap environmentally dangerous National Oil Palm Mission with highly inflated claims of yields and focusing on eco-sensitive North-East and Andaman Islands.
  1. Water Resources
  • Re-formulate National Water Policy treating water as a scarce public good; tackle the growing water crisis; enhance equitable water availability for optimized domestic use, irrigation and industry through effective protection of rivers, expansion of water bodies and increased groundwater recharge; appropriate legislation, effective regulation and demand management of water; water audits and measures to conserve, treat and recycle water especially in urban areas.
  • Ensure equitable provision of WHO-standard piped potable drinking water to all households
  • Halt privatization of water resources and water distribution utilities in urban areas and recognise the right to water as part of the right to life.
  • Check pollution of rivers and other water bodies through effective legislation, regulation and enforcement of sewage and other waste-water treatment and recycling policies; withdraw provisions of Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Amendment, 2024 allowing Centre to override State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs).
  • Undertake comprehensive review of the programme and projects for inter-linking of rivers.
  • Plan and urgently implement measures to protect and improve catchment areas of major rivers especially in the Himalayan region; also take all steps possible to check glacier melting rates such as through regulation of fossil-fuel powered vehicular movement and air pollution in mountain regions.
  1. Health
  • Make right to free health care justiciable through enactment of appropriate legislations at both Central and State levels.
  • Retain health services as a state subject with strong emphasis on federalism.
  • Public expenditure on health to be raised to at least 3.5 per cent in the short term and 5 per cent of the GDP in the long term, with at least 1% and 2% respectively coming from the Centre.
  • Out-of-pocket expenditure on health to be brought to below 25% of health spending expand and strengthen the public healthcare system to ensure free availability of quality health care at all levels, including entire range of medicines, diagnostics and vaccines, and accountability to local communities.
  • Scrap the government-funded PMJAY/Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme and replace it with a Public-centred Universal Health Care system.
  • Reverse the privatisation of health care services and outsourcing of services through PPPs.
  • Reverse the re-branding of Health and Wellness Centres as ‘Arogya mandirs’.
  • Extend and reform the ESI scheme to effectively protect workers’ health in both organized and unorganized sector, and also covering occupational health.
  • Effectively regulate the private health care sector, especially corporate hospitals which should be brought under the Clinical Establishment Act. Modify the National Clinical Establishment Act, 2010 ensuring implementation of the Patients’ Rights Charter and standardization of reasonable rates and quality of various services.
  • Ensure right-based access to comprehensive treatment and care of persons with mental illness through integration of the revised District Mental Health Programme with the National Health Mission.
  • Adopt a people-centred, rational pharmaceutical policy with effective cost-based price controls, elimination of irrational and hazardous formulations, and a comprehensive generic medicines policy covering labelling, prescription and availability at all retail outlets; ensure availability of essential drugs free of cost at all public health care facilities.
  • Initiate programs to break monopolies of pharmaceutical multinational companies in critical areas.
  • Revive public sector pharmaceutical units to harness them for production of essential drugs and vaccines, and reverse privatization trends; reinstate Open-Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) programmes and collaborative R&D for affordable medicines; remove GST for life-saving and crucial medicines.
  • Strictly control and regulate clinical trials and prohibit unethical clinical trials; develop a justiciable charter of rights for clinical trial participants
  • Remove US government’s drug law enforcing agency USFDA’s offices and officials from India.
  • Resist dilution of India’s Patent of Laws and reject provisions in Free Trade Agreements that obstruct domestic production low-cost generic drugs.
  • Ensure effective, appropriate regulatory oversight of AYUSH system of medicine, while supporting evidence-based use of such systems.
  • Give priority to the setting up of new public colleges to train doctors and nurses, especially in underserved areas such as in the North East and in poorer States. Training institutes to be set up for health workers.
  1. Agriculture

            Right to land, water and commons for all

  • Provide equitable access to land and water: legislate for homesteads for the rural poor; grant land rights to landless for cultivation; promote kitchen gardens, backyard poultry, cattle sheds and group farming.
  • Place all above-ceiling land presently held by public or private entities under control of the state and union government for the redistribution to the landless.
  • Create a register of tenants and provide smallholders with secure tenancy. Give tenant farmers statutory support, recognise tenants as beneficiaries of schemes announced for individual benefits, and access to benefits from sector wide schemes financed through public investment.
  • Recognize women as farmers and grant them land rights, secure their tenancy rights over leased lands.
  • Recognize land rights of Adivasi farmers, implement Forest Rights Act (FRA), review all rejections under FRA, and roll back pro-corporate amendments to Indian Forest Act, 1927.

            Right to Food, Employment, Education, Health and Social Protection

  • Ensure job security and minimum wage by extending the number of workdays from 100 to 200 workdays in rural areas @ Rs. 800 wages per day, implement existing provision of 100 days of MGNREGA without creating digital hurdles.
  • Introduce a provision of 100 days of labour support for the SC, ST, and other small and marginal farmers for land development and for the adoption of integrated farming systems (IFS) including natural farming, thus 200 days of rural employment @ Rs. 800 wages per day.
  • Enact old age pensions.
  • Provide childcare and crèche facilities in agricultural workspaces.
  • Provide for separate courts for protection against caste, ethnic, religious, gender-based oppression.
  • Introduce Urban Employment Guarantee Act, guarantee employment for graduates from rural households in nearby towns.

            Right to public and bank finance, production inputs, knowledge and market

  • Guarantee extra budgetary resources to states from the 15th finance commission for raising the level of gross capital formation in agriculture as a percentage ford from the current level of 15.7% to 30%.
  • Guarantee primary producers’ freedom from debt by implementing complete(formal and informal) loan waiver, restore the right of primary producers to priority lending, stop co-lending to delink farmers from the high-cost economy in agriculture; reduce the risks faced from climate change in respect of pursuing agriculture & allied sector occupations.
  • Create a single-window loan facility for small holders to promote integrated farming, strengthen SHGs and Kudambashree-type of institutions to enable women farmers to access agriculture credit from public banking.
  • Guarantee remunerative prices for agricultural commodities establish an effective system of public procurement of all farm produce declared as essential produce/value added products by rural households through cooperatives for the promotion of sustainable rural livelihoods and for the creation of a universal public distribution system.
  • Guarantee access to publicly regulated markets purchasing the primary produce at the minimum support price (MSP) not lower than C2 costs plus 50 % for the products declared as essential commodities for production by state legislatures.
  • Take agriculture out of WTO, no more free trade agreements (FTAs), and no more patent like intellectual property rights (IPRs) on seeds.
  • Withdraw from the agreements signed by ICAR with Bayer, Amazon and otherness, guarantee research, advice, testing and extension through public sector undertakings, and pave the way for national ownership and control of infrastructure required for agri-digitalization and agri-tech delivery.
  • Reintroduce sectoral reservation through legislation for the products attracting AGMARK label to encourage value addition through cooperatives, micro and small businesses & PSUs in order to keep big business out of local markets.
  • Ensure agro-ecologically coupled integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and restore state/district level planning by establishing statutory boards for scientific and equitable land use, area planning, market development, and promotion of value addition to co-products and by-products through group enterprises.
  • Separate Fisheries Ministry in Central and State Governments with the mandate to protect and promote sustainable fisheries and the livelihood of small-scale fish workers including fishers, fish farmers, fish vendors and other ancillary fish workers.
  • Establish a National Commission for Fisheries to look after policy implementation, inter-state disputes, protection and promotion of the rights and entitlements of small-scale fishing communities.
  • Create in every state “State Commissions for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare”.
  • Stop entry of private Dairy Corporate Companies and import of foreign dairy products that threaten existence of India’s Dairy Cooperatives.
  • Abandon plan to open the Indian market by permitting Free Trade on milk and milk-based products.
  • Ensure remunerative prices for milk and milk products.

 

For clarifications contact:

Asha Mishra, General Secretary, AIPSN  gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9425302012, Twitter: @gsaipsn

Declaration and Resolution on Scientific Temper

Click here for English pdf  of the Declaration of Statement on Scientific Temper with signatories 

 

Other languages: Tamil 

 

 

Click here for English pdf of the Resolution adopted along with the Declaration on Scientific Temper 

 

Other languages: Tamil full  Tamilpoints 

 

 

Adopted at “Campaign for scientific temper culmination program and National convention for declaration on scientific temper”

held on 28th Feb 2024 at Kolkata

 

Statement on Scientific Temper in the Current Context

Executive Summary There is an urgent need for a renewed commitment to evidence-based reasoning, critical thinking and a scientific approach in India, especially amidst growing socio-political movements that challenge a scientific temper and universal knowledge production based on commonly agreed methods and understanding. Given the changes in society and technology since the earlier declarations on scientific temper in 1981 and 2011, we emphasise the importance of embracing natural and social sciences, humanities, and the rational experiences of ordinary people in the common endeavour to combat the post-truth culture, the intentional promotion of ignorance, and diminishing trust in science exacerbated by misuse of technology. We call for action across three fronts: the State’s role, the involvement of scientific and academic institutions, and combating the undermining of science by the State, the erosion of academic freedom, and the spread of pseudo-science and unscientific beliefs. We urge scientists, intellectuals, and other like-minded individuals to support evidence-based thinking and policy-making and to uphold constitutional values to foster a scientific temper.

Introduction Since the Coonoor Statement on Scientific Temper in 1981 and the Palampur Declaration in 2011, there have been significant socio-political changes in India and around the world. Briefly, these earlier statements had emphasised the importance of fostering a scientific attitude among the people for development and social advancement. Over time, movements promoting scientific temper in India have also evolved in accordance with changing public perceptions of science and technology (S&T).

Recently, new challenges have emerged in India and elsewhere in the world in the form of strong socio-political movements, backed by the State power, that seek to oppose any scientific approach, evidence-based reasoning or, indeed, any perspective that acknowledges universal scientific knowledge. Globally, a post-truth culture is spreading, marked by a deliberate spreading of ignorance and an anti-intellectual atmosphere, along with a diminishing trust in science. It is ironic that technology, part of the broad umbrella of science, is being harnessed to support these trends through social media, such that manufactured sentiment, prejudice, false narratives, baseless opinions and conspiracy theories gain acceptance as valid ways of thinking.

Against this background, the current situation requires a renewed commitment to robust evidence-based reasoning, drawing from accumulated knowledge in the natural and social sciences, and humanities, as well as from the know-how and rational experiences of working people. Such reasoning aligns with well-recognized methodologies of different disciplines, including emerging interdisciplinary research, applicable not only in academic environments, but also in public discourse and understanding. Both scientists and lay practitioners need to actively embrace and popularise these methods considering the new socio-political realities in India.

This contemporary statement on Scientific Temper has become essential, to address present challenges. This statement shall not undertake a critical review of the previous statements / declarations or debate their points. Instead, it acknowledges past debates and critiques, incorporating their essence into the current statement, recognizing the commonality of scientific disciplines and their methodologies. Rather than revisiting old debates, the focus here is on delineating the significant challenges faced in contemporary India for the constitutionally mandated task of promoting scientific temper, the spirit of inquiry, and humanism. Knowledge production and advancement through purposeful discovery and evidence-based reasoning, including thorough consideration of diverse opinions, is currently under severe threat both in academia and in society at large.

Dangerous new theatre As noted earlier, the arena for fostering scientific temper has evolved significantly in recent decades, becoming increasingly contested, including aggressive socio-cultural forces as well as governmental policies and administrative measures antagonistic to scientific temper. The current situation in India demands critical understanding and action on three interrelated fronts: the role of the State and polity, the character and function of scientific research and academic institutions, and malign influences in society and among the general public.

Article 51A(h) of the Constitution of India speaks of the duty of citizens to promote scientific temper. There is concern in some quarters that responsibilities of the State in this regard have not been adequately highlighted. While it might have been assumed that the State’s primary responsibility is implicit when citizens are called upon for certain duties, there is a need for a clearer delineation of the State’s role.

Note: In the declaration, the terms ‘scientists’ and ‘scientific institutions’ are used as terms denoting all natural sciences, social sciences and humanities disciplines, and those others following an evidence-based path of knowledge production and understanding.

Role of the State In the initial post-Independence decades, the Indian State placed significant trust in scientists1 and scientific institutions. Development policies were evidence-driven, with research institutions and centres of excellence enjoying high priority and prestige, and enjoying substantial autonomy. Documents like the Industrial Policy Resolution and a unique Scientific Policy Resolution were foundational to planned development, guided by a multidisciplinary group of experts in the Planning Commission. Independent scientists and social scientists, both from India and abroad, were involved in policy-making, underlining the importance given to science and evidence-based policy-making. Notably, religion played a minimal role in state affairs, and secularism, defined as non-discrimination and equal respect for all religions, was practised. However, the evils of casteism and communalism have never been properly eliminated.

However, in subsequent years, bureaucratism, elitism, and a techno-fix mentality crept into the system, creating something of a divide between scientists and the general public. Trust in scientific institutions also eroded as a perception grew that “establishment science” primarily served officialdom and corporate interests, rather than the public good as supported by verifiable data. During this period, academic, professional, and informed activist voices in civil society critiqued official narratives, influencing public opinion and contributing to critical thinking and evidence-based policymaking. While the State may not have proactively cultivated scientific temper, it engaged with and supported activities to popularise science among the wider public and children. The State also provided considerable space in governance and public discourse for non-official scientific, expert, and informed lay opinion.

Undermining science and a scientific approach   Presently, the State displays a stark departure from this earlier stance. Government and its various organs now actively oppose a scientific approach, independent or critical thinking, and evidence-based thinking and policy-making. This antagonistic stance is widely and persistently communicated to the public through various means, perpetuating such attitudes. State support for research and development (R&D), already below comparable countries as a percentage of GDP, has hit historic lows, raising serious concerns about India’s future in the knowledge era. Domestic assembly by cheap labour is misrepresented as self-reliance, thus also underplaying the need for research and knowledge production.

Funding, fellowships, and independent research face severe cuts in academic and research institutions, burdened by overpowering bureaucratic structures. Career advancement now favours adherence to dominant ideologies, sycophancy, and obedience to government directives over adherence to imperatives arising from domain expertise and research-based insights. Development data and India’s position in reputed international rankings are contested on spurious grounds. Similar data generated in India, even by government institutions, are rejected or manipulated to fit political narratives. On numerous issues, the government claims to lack data, but still proceeds with policy decisions. Open discussions in higher learning institutions are discouraged, hindering critical thinking, pluralism, and academic freedom.

Beyond image management, these tendencies undermine a scientific approach and evidence-based policymaking, demoralising the knowledge production community and fostering anti-intellectual attitudes.

The State and allied social forces directly undermine science and its methods among the public. Unscientific claims by prominent figures in political circles, boasting of imaginary technological achievements and exaggerated ideas about ancient Indian knowledge, are used to build and support a hyper-nationalist narrative. These assertions lack evidence, relying on ambiguous mythological references and dubious interpretations of ancient texts, often draped in quasi-religious cover so as to suppress dissenting voices. Such fanciful and boastful claims undermine many actual substantial contributions of ancient India emanating from various cultural streams and covering intellectual as well as artisanal and technical accomplishments. Critics of such claims are readily branded as anti-national or westernised, questioning both history and science, and undermining the scientific method. Dissent and plurality of opinion, known to be enabling conditions for intellectual progress, are presently under threat.

Assault on the education sector It is disheartening to witness these trends now being introduced into the formal education system, potentially influencing an entire generation unless effectively countered. School textbooks and readings in higher education are undergoing revisions that promote the idea of the unquestioned superiority of knowledge in ancient India, while downplaying the role of other civilizations and their groundbreaking contributions. Whereas addressing Euro-centrism and acknowledging the contributions from ancient India, China, and other “eastern” civilizations is essential, denying the emergence of modern science and technology and the industrial revolution, and the factors leading to it, is not only untruthful but also misleading. The giant strides of modern science and technology cannot be undermined or replaced by fictional narratives, as seen in revised school textbooks of agencies at the Centre and in various states.

These revised textbooks also omit chapters on crucial historical, societal, economic, and ecological issues in India. In an examination-oriented system not fostering critical thinking, this leaves students ill-prepared for higher studies or research and for their roles as informed citizens contributing to national development.

In higher education, mandatory courses on “traditional knowledge systems” are being introduced, presenting a-historical and distorted accounts of knowledge in ancient India. These courses exclusively glorify the Vedic-Sanskritic tradition, neglecting other cultural streams in ancient India and completely disregarding the significant generation of new knowledge in mediaeval India, out of prejudice against particular religious and cultural

streams. This deliberate slant aims to erase or rewrite historical evidence and obstruct critical thinking, leaving students and citizens vulnerable to bias and instilling a distorted view of syncretic Indian traditions and multicultural reality. In the long run, this will result in incalculable damage to the progress of Indian science and to social harmony.

Societal attack In recent decades, India has witnessed the growth of socio-religious orthodoxy, traditionalism, and revivalism, fueled by majoritarian socio-political forces. Traditional religious practices, festivals, and communal forms of organisation have proliferated. Numerous “Godmen” have emerged with substantial resources, sizable followings, and at times, significant political backing. These cults, despite projecting high-thinking spiritualism, have propagated superstitions, pseudo-scientific beliefs, and socio-religious orthodoxy.

Today, social forces aligned with the ruling establishment and supported by the State, disseminate pseudo-science and a belief in mythology as history. False narratives are being used to construct a unitary majoritarian religion and culture, contrary to the diverse religious beliefs even among the majority community. False and unscientific narratives, such as vegetarianism as a dominant “traditional” practice, are being promoted, contradicting scientific surveys conducted by official agencies.

During the COVID pandemic, superstitions and pseudo-scientific notions related to health were actively promoted under the guise of endorsing “traditional” or ancient Indian health systems while implicitly or explicitly criticising modern medicine. Highly placed authorities encouraged practices like lighting lamps and clanging utensils to ward off the virus, with social media amplifying purported “proof” of efficacy, such as recordings of “cosmic vibrations” by NASA. Other pseudo-scientific claims are similarly backed by false evidence supposedly coming from reputed scientific agencies. Artificial creation of long-lost legendary ancient rivers is being undertaken to perpetuate mythology. All these exploit the enduring respect common people hold for science and its truth value. The forces of unreason seek to sow confusion regarding evidence and scientific methods.

Social media and digital technologies play a pivotal role in the State-backed dissemination of unscientific and anti-scientific views, pseudo-science, false narratives, and conspiracy theories aimed at undermining a scientific approach.

In closing, it is important to address the idea that “other worldly” religious beliefs pose the only or major obstacle to fostering a scientific temper in India. Faith poses many challenges which science or rationalism may not always be able to tackle, insofar as faith itself may be defined or perceived as belonging to a non-physical domain. Freedom of religion or Individual faith may indeed be accorded due recognition. At the same time, discriminatory practices or those that impinge on others’ rights or affect public order, must be opposed, and their irrational basis explained. Obscurantism persists due to ongoing weaknesses in society itself, highlighting larger battles that need to be fought, of which the present one may be just a part. Given the organised challenges to a scientific approach discussed earlier, a more focused and targeted strategy is required for the campaign to promote or strengthen a scientific temper.

Declaration We scientists and intellectuals across disciplines, activists and all individuals passionate about spreading a scientific temper, acknowledge that the struggle to promote a scientific temper is wide-ranging and embraces many dimensions. Yet we also understand that, given the grave threats posed in the current context, the major challenge in this period is to combat and roll back these threats. We realise the imminent danger posed by organised multi-pronged attacks to undermine a scientific attitude among the populace. Such attacks not only disseminate pseudo-science, blind faith, and unreason but also promote obscurantism, communitarian prejudices, and discrimination, striking at the core of a humanist approach. False narratives, unfounded opinions, and a cloak of religiosity are wielded to instil adherence to a manufactured, homogenised, majoritarian idea of India.

We, the signatories of this declaration, re-attest the importance of working towards promotion of scientific temper in society. We recognise the grassroots work put in by people’s science movements, other like-minded organisations and dedicated individuals, and commit to support these and other similar efforts. We appeal to like-minded individuals in academia and research institutions, the bureaucracy, and the political class to take a stand upholding constitutional values.

 

List of Signatories given below 

 

 

 

 

 

For further information contact

Satyajit Rath  9868877399

Asha Mishra   9425302012

Arunabh Mishra  9831105979

Krishnaswamy 8012558638

Aniket Sule  9820273239

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resolution adopted by the AIPSN along with the  “Statement on Scientific Temper Declaration”

in the  “Campaign for scientific temper culmination program and National convention for declaration on scientific temper”

held on 28th Feb 2024 at Kolkata

 

 

Convinced that India that is Bharat grew for several centuries as Hindostan, and where the people of various religions chose to live together after becoming politically independent from the British Empire and experiencing the partition, is not  a society of comparative and competitive religious fanaticism;

Certain that Hindostan is not the land of make-believe demands on Astha (the tradition of belief systems) alone, but that Hindostan is also the land of modern interpretations of religion;

Confident that Hindostan is the land of the rich tradition of syncretism (combining different traditions) and of seekers of the Universal Truths in religions, and that the people cherish civilizational heritage and celebrate the unity in diversity in food, dress and language on everyday basis;

Clear that Hindostan is the land where Nastiks and Astiks coexisted, materialistic philosophical traditions, for example, lokayata flourished, and the revolution of equality through Buddhism appealing to large sections of society took root, and where the traditions of rebellion and resistance grew through the teachings of Basava, Kabir, Nanak, Narayana Guru, Periyar and many more, promoted inclusiveness and syncretism of sufi and bhakti spiritual preachers;

Accepting that the people care for the legacy of the freedom movement, constitutional vision, national unity and integrity, and do not doubt that the majority is concerned about economic, ecological and social justice, and they continue to think about fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy enshrined in the Indian Constitution;

Recognizing that the people as bearers of historical knowledge, skills and culture, and as social carriers of agro-food diversity, culinary heritage, dietary selections, continue to enjoy variegated range of food, health and fitness practices, and they would be willing to stand up once again against the bearers of sectarian politics trying to take away their economic, social and political freedoms;

Recalling that the contributions to modern science & technology made by J C Bose,  M Visvesvaraya, P C Ray, C V Raman, M N Saha, P C Mahalanobis, S N Bose, S.S. Sokhey, SS Bhatnagar, Homi Bhabha,  Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan and by many others who challenged the colonial order in S&T, and the perspective and strategy of Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR, 1958) which cherished self-reliance and, embraced scientific approach to policymaking, the scientific and technological communities would not let the people suffer unreason and eliminate the space for pluralism and diversity from the world of higher education, science, technology and humanities;

Persuaded that as the post-independent India’s transformative impulses of self-reliance that accommodated the Gandhians, Nehruvians and Leftists to practice their own S&T heuristics for development in the parallel, gave a place to the ethos of scientific temper and humanism in the Indian Constitution, and in the National Curriculum Framework (2005) and in the Right to Education legislation (2008), the Indian S&T community and the people can be mobilized to defend these gains;

Knowing that the ecumenical (promoting unity among religions), cosmopolitan and modern traditions of scientific and technical practice have deep roots in India, the S&T community can be made to appreciate that the sources of ancient and medieval contributions to science involved multi-cultural interactions, and that the attempts to present mythology as history and fiction as science do not resonate well with the people, the vast majority of Indian people can be made to understand how the latest modern construction of the past traditions is to present an ideology that glosses over and hides the inequalities and exploitation based on caste, class, gender and community;

Recognising that as the people resisted Brahmanism and caste oppression in the ancient and medieval times, the latest attempts to cultivate and impose the irrational and unreasonable ideas on the Indian Women, Youth, Adivasis and Dalits can also be defeated among the people across North, South, East and West of India by mobilizing the people against the assault on scientific temper in the relevant spheres of school and higher education, scientific research and science popularisation;

Feeling alarmed at the Union Government’s blatant unconstitutional attempts to impose on the states the National Education Policy (NEP, 2020), that has the potential to damage irreparably the national character and destroy the secular and democratic contributions of Indian education, the Peoples’ Science Movements (PSMs) call upon the state governments to resist the efforts that sow the seeds of hatred and conformism deep into the mind of the young under the influence of the idea of Hindutava – a destructor of social progress and universal brotherhood/sisterhood, and rededicate themselves to developing quality education with public purposes of national importance

As PSMs,

We solemnly affirm our constitutional right to defend the integrity of Article 51 A(h), and to ensure that the investments in education, science, technology, humanities and arts are considerably enhanced and directed to work for the realization of the scientific temper/outlook[1], for the cultivation of linguistic and socio-cultural diversity, for the universally cherished message of love (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ – the world is one family’ ) and for the secular and socialist idea of India and for the reduction of inequalities;

We will contribute to the movements seeking economic, social and ecological justice, and work for the dignified livelihood for the Indian people as a whole through education and research, commit to redouble our own efforts for the promotion of progressive anti-imperialist nationalism, and to strengthen the role and contribution of Indian S&T institutions in the processes of decision making and evaluation of the socio-economic policies under implementation;

We continue with the work started by Dara Shikoh, Savitribai and Jyotriba Phule, Ramabai, Rabindranath Tagore, Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Periyar, Bhim Rao Ambedkar, EMS Namboodripad, Ashfaqullah, Bhagat Singh, Subhas Bose, Meghnath Saha, S.S Bhatnagar, Homi Bhabha, S.S. Sokhey, Vikram Sarabhai Husain Zaheer and many others who stood their ground and established the edifice of post-independence period modern S&T institutions, and helped the people to realize the idea of India and the legacy of progressive traditions of the freedom movement;

Mobilize the scientific community to stand up for academic freedom, and actively collaborate with the democratic movement and civil society to defend civil liberties and democratic rights, freedom of expression, organization, representation and struggle through constitutional means, and expose and isolate the forces supporting the babas spreading fatalism and unreason,

Collaborate and work with the rationalists, scholars, academics, scientists, technologists, social scientists, teachers of humanities and sciences,  and professionals about the way forward for the realization of the above stated goals of social progress, propose policies, build institutions and establish a standing mechanism to pursue the challenge of cultivation of scientific temper,  humanism and world peace.

[1] The term scientific temper is broadly defined as “a modest open-minded temper—a temper ever ready to welcome new light, new knowledge, new experiments, even when their results are unfavourable to preconceived opinions and long-cherished theories.

For further information contact

Satyajit Rath  9868877399

Asha Mishra   9425302012

Arunabh Mishra  9831105979

Krishnaswamy 8012558638

 

 

 

 

AIPSN Foundation Day Webinar series

 

Click here to see the link to Prabir’s talk from which two 5 minute excerpts were played in the Inaugural Webinar on AIPSN Foundation Day

 

11febPrabir

Earlier events

click here to download the poster for the Feb 11 storynar in English and in Hindi 

click here to download the book “Science for Social Revolution”

75 Years of Independence: Self Reliance, Idea of India and Road to the Future

Background Paper

AIPSN Campaign on 75 Years of Independence

click here to get the pdf of the background paper

 

Click here to get the long version of the brochure 

Click here to get the reduced version of brochure

 

75 Years of Independence: Self Reliance, Idea of India and Road to the Future

             Independent India was born on 15th August 1947 with the end of British colonial rule and unfurling of the tri-colour on the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi by the new nation’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. India’s journey over the next 75 years has been remarkable by any standards, but with many ups and downs along the way. While there is much to celebrate, there is also much to be disappointed about. Also, unfortunately, perspectives and actions under the current political dispensation are posing serious challenges to the very foundations of our nation laid during the freedom struggle, threatening the edifice of the Constitution and the very Idea of India forged collectively by the people’s movement for Independence and the efforts towards building of independent India. In this the 75th year of Independence, the Peoples Science Movement looks at how our independent nation started, what was achieved, what went wrong and what prospects and challenges lie ahead in the future.

Early years

Born out of the values and ideas forged during the freedom movement, and the wholehearted participation of all sections of the people, India as a poor, developing and highly diverse country with a massive poverty and deprivation burden, low literacy rates, poor health and other human development indicators, embarked on a path rarely seen among newly-independent nations of the time. The path India adopted comprised several core ideas of nationhood such as universal voting rights; equality of all citizens before the law; a secular state without discrimination between religions, castes, languages, ethnicities or gender; the idea of unity in this diverse country of multiple cultures and traditions; freedom of expression and plurality of opinion; and a commitment to build a modern welfare state with a citizenry imbued with scientific temper and critical thinking.

India’s Constitution adopted in 1950 including many subsequent amendments by the legislature, further advanced these Ideas of India in both concept and practice by the political executive i.e. the government, the legislature and the judiciary, and provided an institutional framework for democratic governance and safeguarding citizens’ rights. The Constitution provided for a popularly accountable and federated system of governance involving the Union of India and its States. It also provided for checks and balances, separation of powers between an independent legislature, executive and judiciary, as well as strong institutions of governance with autonomy from the political executive. The world watched in wonder and praised India as it progressed along this path, managing arguably one of the most socio-culturally diverse and complex countries, undoubtedly with many hiccups along the way.

Independent India adopted a policy framework of building a strong industrial base based on scientific and technological (S&T) self-reliance and public sector enterprises in core sectors of the economy, helping the country build an independent industrial base, and also build its own capabilities across sectors. Western countries with their neo-colonial mindsets by and large did not help India in this process of industrialization, whereas the then Soviet Union extended considerable assistance in basic and heavy industries especially through public sector units (PSU) in steel, petroleum, electricity and power generation equipment, coal, mining and related machinery, heavy machines, pharmaceuticals etc  including through technology transfer and R&D efforts to support India’s efforts to achieve self-reliance.

With a special determination, India also built capabilities, knowledge and technologies in frontier areas of space and atomic energy, as well as to a lesser extent in defence in collaboration with many countries and overseas companies. This enabled India to maintain strategic autonomy from major foreign powers and to play a leading role in building the Non-Aligned Movement along with most newly-independent and developing countries and other nations. The adoption by Parliament of the Industrial Policy Resolution in 1956 and the milestone Scientific Policy Resolution of 1958, a first such document among nations which heralded S&T-based enterprises and the obligation of the State to build a scientific temper among its citizens, underscored this trajectory of S&T self-reliance, economic progress and human resource development structured around modern industries in core sectors. Premier public institutions of research and higher education were established in the early post-Independence years, such as the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and several IITs in collaboration with different countries as a crucial part of this endeavour.

The 1948 Bombay Plan prepared by private sector leaders had agreed that the state should take the lead in the core sector especially heavy industries, since the private sector did not have either the capital or the capability required. Private companies would then concentrate on consumer goods and light industries. Contrary to some propaganda and public perceptions, this perspective was not simply the result of a Nehruvian “socialist” vision, but the result of considered thinking by the captains of Indian industry and commerce.

This industrial foundation, along with central planning, propelled the country forward to a leading position among developing countries in the first few decades after independence.

Together, these bestowed India with an enviable position in the international community, substantial soft power and respect in the comity of nations.

Despite these strengths, several lacunae in both conception and implementation may be noted in this early period, many of which persisted in successive decades.

In the agreed division of industrial responsibilities, the private sector did not develop substantial autonomous capabilities and were content with protectionist policies against imports and entry of foreign firms, and profited from a captive domestic market for low-quality, low volume, uncompetitive goods. Thus the private sector did not make much contribution to self-reliance or national industrial advancement with only a few exceptions. Unfortunately, this tendency persists even to this day. While private sector companies have pushed their way into sectors formerly earmarked for the state sector, they have still not built autonomous domestic capabilities or invested in R&D and self-reliance, preferring foreign collaborations and lower-end technologies.

Agriculture was seriously addressed only in the 1960s in the 4th five-year Plan through the Green Revolution. The programme was a huge success as regards raising food grain production substantially, and almost eliminating major cereals imports. However, the high inputs strategy brought with it with many negative aspects as discussed in the next section, leaving major issues yet to be addressed in agriculture.

Low investment in school education and primary health held back the already impoverished masses, slowed the pace of development, and prevented the people especially the poor from achieving their true potential. Despite many efforts at different points of time, substantial weaknesses persist in social infrastructure.

In the period under discussion, industrial development was stagnating as noted earlier, unable to generate higher productivity and employment despite the protected economy.

The Middle Decades: hits and misses

Governments in the later 1960s to the 1980s undertook several initiatives to address the deficits mentioned above. It is useful to examine the successes and failures of this period in some detail, since it was followed by a prolonged period of neo-liberal policies till the present and enables an informed comparison.

Public sector industries continued their dominant position in the economy, but did not sufficiently modernize to the next generation of technologies that were already establishing a strong presence in the global economy but were constrained within a limited framework of import substitution. The private sector continued to flourish but in a heavily protected domestic market and, while complaining of a “license-permit raj” imposed by government, made little effort to overcome these constraints, as shown by the under-development of light engineering and consumer goods industries during these decades. In the context of economic and technological developments, especially in comparable economies in East and South-East Asia which were broadly on par with India in terms of development in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it is no surprise that the period is described as the “lost decade.” Combined with developments after liberalization of the Indian economy, the missed opportunities of this period, raises serious issues about what India needs to do in the contemporary context to at least catch up with other countries as regards self-reliance S&T in the knowledge era.

Several progressive economic measures were initiated during this period. While Insurance had been nationalized much earlier in 1956, 14 major Banks were nationalized in 1969, providing stable financial underpinnings to development, and extended banking services as well as credit availability to hitherto unserved sections, especially in rural areas. Many experts and commentators doubt if opening up of banking to the private sector since liberalization of the economy has been beneficial to the people especially in rural areas or to the economy as a whole.

Rural poverty was explicitly addressed only in the 5th five-year plan, notably through the then government’s “garibi hatao” programme and several poverty alleviation schemes such as IRDP, TRYSEM, SGSY and related self-employment Schemes over the next few Plans. Unfortunately even these could not achieve their objective, with some official evaluations showing that only 14% of beneficiaries were enabled to go above the poverty line, however without any assessment of how many later dropped below it later. It was only much later, under the UPA Government in 2006-10, that the effective demand-driven MNREGA wage-employment Scheme, which was introduced through enormous push by progressive forces and civil society organizations, provided much relief for the rural un-/ under-employed and which proved its usefulness during the pandemic. Yet rural-urban disparities and large-scale unemployment or under-employment persist to this day as structural problems.

The Asian Experience

During the 1970s and early 1980s, other South East Asian countries, who were at a par with India a decade earlier, galloped ahead economically and in human development indicators through rapid development of indigenous S&T capabilities in mass manufacturing, white goods, electronic goods, micro-chips and computers.

In Japan or South Korea this was not just a giant leap forward in manufacturing, but was built by domestic companies and product brands, mostly without foreign collaboration, supported by both applied and basic research such as in particle physics, materials, electronics, optics etc and was backed by substantial policy planning and financial support by their respective governments.

These experiences showed that the concept of self-reliance was not some antiquated “socialist” idea, but a practical policy for nations wishing to establish their strong and independent presence in the world economy, and developing the capability to deal with the next technological shift. These experiences have all shown the value of self-reliance and indigenous capability, which are not merely means to developing the domestic economy, but a means towards playing a leading role in the global economy instead of remaining dependent on others or playing a junior role lower down in the value chain.

It should also be noted that these SE Asian countries consistently invested around 4-5% or more of GDP on R&D, education and health.  In comparison, India’s investments in these three areas continue to languish at around 1-2%.  Things got no better in the 1990s or the decades thereafter, including after 2014 when grandiose promises were made to take India into the 21st century or become a developed country by 2025 or become a $5 trillion economy soon.

Agriculture

Agriculture was another sector relatively neglected in the early post-Independence decades, but continuing low food grain production, several near-famine years, and a devastating and frankly humiliating dependence on food aid notably from the US, prompted a major push to augment food grain production in the late 1960s onwards in the form of the so-called Green Revolution (GR). The new policy, supported by substantial financial and technological assistance from international organizations and developed countries especially the US, was focused on wheat and rice in the fertile and irrigated areas of Punjab, Haryana and West UP, and was based on high inputs of specially-developed high-yielding varieties, irrigation water, inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, and mechanization of operations. The policy brought dramatic improvements in wheat and rice production, and saw India become a major agricultural producer in the world and move towards minimal imports in only a few agricultural produce. Total production of food grains increased from 51 million tonnes in 1950-51 to close to 300 million tonnes at present with huge increases in yield per hectare, multiple crops each year and expansion of acreage under cultivation. GR therefore undoubtedly transformed food grain production and agriculture in general in India, but brought along with it many negative consequences now being felt in the country and which will haunt the country for decades to come unless several corrective measures are urgently taken.

Overuse of chemical fertilizers and new farming practices have resulted in serious depletion of soil health with related productivity losses. Over irrigation especially through excessive use of groundwater has resulted in severe depletion of water resources and water-logging. High input costs including mechanization have skewed agriculture in favour of larger farmers and have also led to high indebtedness. The emphasis on HYV of wheat and rice has led to loss of biodiversity especially indigenous varieties, besides sharp decrease in cultivation of millets and other ‘coarse’ grains to the detriment of nutritional status, crop diversification and over-reliance on just two crops with impact on returns. The recent farmers’ agitation over the government’s so-called agricultural “reforms” has been prompted in large part by the skewed socio-economic impacts of the Green Revolution.

GR has had several other undesirable impacts too. The policy was implemented vigorously through the active involvement of agricultural universities who contributed greatly in terms of S&T but also became deeply inter-twined with issues of rich farmers, mechanized and industrial farming and linkages with Western institutions. The famously successful system of extension workers that spread the message and practices of the GR collapsed when the main task was over and was never replaced, leaving farmers dependent on mostly MNC agri-businesses for extension services.

Other regions were neglected due to the overwhelming emphasis on the north-western states although a few sub-regions in the eastern Gangetic basin did benefit. However, crops other than wheat and rice, and agriculture in rainfed areas accounting to around 65% of farmers were not given due attention, even though the “brown revolution” or the ‘second green revolution” are bandied about. This has seen the continued neglect and impoverishment of eastern India, as well as to the narrowing of the food basket especially of poorer people.

It should be underlined that despite the much heralded success of the GR, and the “self-sufficiency” that India has supposedly attained, a large proportion of the Indian people still go to sleep hungry and do not get two square meals a day. According to a 2021 FAO Report, about 15% of India’s population or about 195 million people, are undernourished and ranks 101 out of 160 countries according to the World hunger Index 2021, ranking lower than Bangladesh (76) and Pakistan (92). All these reports indicate that India may not meet the millennium Development Goal of “zero hunger” by 2030. Clearly, the problems are not restricted to food production alone, but are related to socio-political policies governing inequalities and access.

These deficiencies and the negative consequences on Indian agriculture subsequent to the GR need to be addressed urgently, particularly R&D in raising productivity in rainfed areas, building climate resilience, and redressing the inequalities in food consumption and nutrition.

Environment

One sector where considerable effort and new initiatives were taken, which were not envisaged during the independence movement or during the first two post-Independence decades, was in environmental protection, conservation and regulation. This is hardly surprising since sensitivity to environmental issues had barely entered public consciousness, leave alone governance, in any part of the world, except for the forest conservation movement in Britain and colonial India in the 18th and 19th centuries and later in the US in order to ensure continued supplies of timber, and the setting up of nature and wildlife sanctuaries and national parks in the US in the early 20th century. The Club of Rome in the 1960s warned about the potential exhausting of the mineral resources that were the foundation of capitalism, but the panic was short-lived as capitalism itself evolved. However, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, for the first time brought the environment and its linkage with human development into governance concerns, and institutionalized international discussions and diplomacy on environmental regulation.

Then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the only head of government to attend the historic summit, was said to have been deeply influenced by it, and initiated several policy measures in India broadly in tune with the Stockholm recommendations and those of other related global conferences. However, there is strong evidence supported by scholars that environmental regulations in India have evolved in response to both international diplomacy and, even more so, to pressure from civil society and social movements within the country. After Stockholm, the then government enacted a series of laws including major amendments to the Constitution as part of the series under the 42nd Amendment. Article 48A under Part IV obliges the state to protect and preserve the environment, while Article 51A (g) assigns citizens to do the same. The Air Act 1981, the Environment Protection Act 1986 and the Water Act 1976 also followed.

At the same time, the Chipko movement, the Silent Valley movement, and the movement to protect and advance forest rights of tribals and forest dwellers, all catalyzed major legislation, while the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, in which the Peoples Science Movement played a major role, catalyzed a raft of legislations and regulations governing industrial pollution, hazardous materials etc. All these movements broadened the scope of peoples participation in decision-making on developmental projects through mechanisms such as mandatory public hearings.

However, from the outset, environmental policies and their implementation in India have had a mixed record, as a result of pressure from corporate interests and supporting political and bureaucratic forces, and inadequate push from mainstream political formations for environmentally sustainable development policies. Despite victories in many battles for popular movements, the longer war continues and environmental regulations remain a theatre of daily confrontation calling for constant vigil by civil society and peoples movements such as the PSM. Forest rights continue to be threatened to this day, industrial accidents including those involving hazardous materials continue to occur due to lax if not collusive regulatory bodies. At present, environmental regulations are under severe attack, threatening the hard-won rights, laws and regulatory systems put in place over the decades. The intention, and the impact, is that the natural environment is being severely damaged, along with the lives and livelihoods of millions of people dependent upon it such as tribal people, other forest dwellers, fishers and many others.

Education

Investments in education, primary health and R&D continued to stagnate or even decline in real terms. Both in school and higher education the private sector expanded rapidly at the expense of the public system, including in rural areas. Private universities especially in engineering and medicine also proliferated with poor planning or regulation, leading to malpractices such as capitation fees, deficiencies in reservation, poor infrastructure and quality of education resulting in high unemployment or under-employment of graduates and, later, to closures leaving students in the lurch.

Ill-effects of the major failures during the early post-Independence decades in social infrastructure investments notably in health and education as noted earlier have become entrenched over the decades and have been worsened by the neo-liberal tendencies of withdrawal of the state from social services, and their privatization and commercialization.

The public education system certainly expanded in early decades after independence till India established the world’s second largest school system after China. However, despite all the attempts over the decades, and several new initiatives or special thrust programmes taken up from time to time, progress towards universal, free and compulsory education has been unsatisfactory in overall terms in both quantitative and qualitative terms. While enrolment rates in elementary stages have climbed steadily, crossing 90% about a decade ago, enrolment at higher stages of the education system have continued to drop off substantially to around 50% at the secondary stage, skewed even worse for female students. Teacher-student ratios are low and many surveys have shown quality of school education to be poor. Due to these weaknesses, and preferences and trend-setting by the middle-classes, private education has made major inroads over the years especially in secondary education, with enrolments in often English-medium private schools or even unrecognized private schools increasingly sharply in recent years at the cost of the public school system, including in rural areas, despite the regulations of the RTE Act of 2009 which, for the first time, made free education a constitutional right for children from 6 to 14 years of age. Inequalities between urban and rural areas, between better off and poor students, and between upper and lower castes have become deeply ingrained in the education system in India including at school level. These trends have only worsened in most States with the onset of neo-liberal economic policies and the withdrawal of the state from both social and physical infrastructure.  The new National Education Policy (NEP 2020), with its added and strong emphasis on privatization and virtual on-line education will mostly amplify these deficiencies in education and in higher education as well, making these the Achilles heel for India’s future.

Health

A public health system to deliver primary health care was, and remains, another major developmental and welfare measure which was neither taken up strongly in the early post-independence period nor strengthened later to make up for earlier failures. Till today, this remains one of the largest and most glaring failures of the 75 years of Indian independence, as starkly evidenced by India lagging behind even several of our neighbours in South Asia and other low-income countries as regards basic health indicators. In 2016, India ranked 145 out of 195 countries in a Health Care Quality Index reported in The Lancet in 2019, with a score of 41.2 improving considerably from 1990 but still well below the global average of 54.4, and still ranking below Bangladesh and Bhutan, sub-Saharan Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Health was unfortunately not accorded adequate priority in the early post-Independence decades and was not recognized as a constitutional even later as was done for RtE, despite the strong and detailed recommendations of the Bhore Committee 1943-46. Several subsequent high-powered committees followed, resulting in the National Health Policy of 1983 which was largely shaped by the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration of “Health for All by 2020.” While the new policy at least introduced some institutional structure for health care delivery and public health systems at different decentralized levels of society, subsequent early neo-liberal “reforms” introduced more disease-specific centralized vertical programmes and concepts like user fees, and diluted the earlier primary health care system. The ideas of Universal Health Care advocated internationally was also sought to be implemented in India, but remained on the shelf. Similarly the National Health Policy introduced by both the UPA and later the present BJP-NDA dispensation contain many ideas but few commitments and institutional arrangements.

Authoritarianism

Public resentment of the continuing failures of the government to address basic issues and growing authoritarian tendencies in the Union government, boiled over in 1974-75, when the country witnessed widespread popular unrest and the famous nationwide Railway strike, leading to the government headed by Mrs.Indira Gandhi declaring Emergency on 26 June 1975. Political and civil society opponents were arrested, all civil liberties and press freedom were suspended, freedom of expression and assembly by citizens and workers were curbed, States’ rights were trampled upon, and even independence of the judiciary in practice if not in law was constrained through the idea of a “committed judiciary.” At one stroke, the people found all their hard won rights for which they had struggled during the freedom movement were snatched away by an authoritarian government that dissolved the distinction between Executive Government and State. However, the people’s anger expressed itself forcefully in the general elections of 1977 when the incumbent government was defeated and democracy restored under the new and first-ever non-Congress government.

Constitutional experts and commentators, especially those who were witness to or had experienced the Emergency excesses and participated in resistance to them, term the current atmosphere of executive non-accountability, dominance over all institutions, flouting of Constitutional norms and intolerance of dissent in both the polity and civil society, to be like an “undeclared Emergency.” It is therefore important to recall the 1975 emergency and parallels between the present situation and that period.

.           Several changes from what may broadly be termed the “Nehruvian path of development” were initiated or experimented with by the non-Congress governments after Emergency and later when several non-Congress formations came to power during the later part of the 1980s, some with positive outcomes, others with mixed or questionable outcomes. In the developmental arena, greater emphasis was seen on the role of the private sector, enhanced civil society participation in policy-making and governance, and decentralization of governance favouring States and local self-government. However, the short life-spans of these governments did not allow for either a detailed appraisal of these policy shifts or indeed for any of these policies taking root. Some trends, however, do seem to have established themselves in the body politic, such as coalitions of like-minded forces around a common programme, assertion of a strong civil society role in governance and, till the current dispensation came to power, decentralization of governance institutions and mechanisms.

Neo-liberal phase

By the 1980s and 90s, commitment of the state to the initial direction and impetus of self-reliant development led by the public sector weakened gradually,  and  dominant forces in the economy and in the political class started moving towards courting foreign investment, downplaying or divestment of public sector units (PSUs), opening up different sectors to the private sector, and a gradual withdrawal of the State from public services, the social sector and many industrial sectors under the influence of the by now internationally dominant neo-liberal economic framework championed by the IMF, World Bank and other international agencies. The collapse of the Soviet Union also saw substantial changes in India’s non-aligned foreign policy and the pro-Western trend further intensified these economic policy changes. These trends climaxed with a full-fledged embrace of neo-liberal policies in the 1990s with the stated aim of unleashing the “animal instincts” of the domestic private sector, foreign investors and multi-national corporations (MNCs), who were provided numerous incentives of de-regulation and opening up almost all sectors of the economy.

Crisis-level economic problems in the early 1990s triggered a full-scale embrace of neo-liberal policies in the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh decade and later in the “dream team” UPA decade, as well as the intervening Vajpayee-Arun Shourie-Jaswant Singh era. India no doubt experienced high GDP growth rates in this period, with some poverty reduction but with deepening inequality too. In pursuit of privatization, natural resources were handed over to private corporate houses in mining, minerals, petroleum and the airwaves, ports and other infrastructure, all at a pittance allowing for super-profits, and numerous key economic sectors were opened up to Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) and the domestic private sector, while simultaneously rival PSUs were systematically weakened or undermined, for example in telecom at the cost of BSNL and in aviation at the expense of Air India/Indian Airlines. A process of privatization of public utilities such electricity and water distribution was also set in motion following the World Bank-IMF prescription. While corporate classes and a small section of the middle-classes benefited from these economic changes, business magnates were the biggest gainers, with greater concentration of wealth at the top of the pyramid.  There was a boom in consumer durables, boosted by salary rises for government and public sector employees through successive pay commissions and prods to banks to hugely expand loan schemes on liberal terms. Foreign companies entered the Indian market in a big way, both directly and through portfolio investments, aided by generous taxation and other incentives.

Large Indian private manufacturing companies entered into collaborations with MNCs and other foreign companies taking advantage of these changes. But contrary to the promise that liberalization, privatization, globalization and FDI would bring in new technologies to the country, almost none of the private players absorbed these modern technologies and improved products, and launched their own globally competitive products and brands, or emerged as global players in their own right. For the most part, they remained junior partners of MNCs and other foreign companies. A few sectors displayed some dynamism, for instance in software and business processes, but it should be noted that most Indian companies were providing services for foreign clients rather than developing or promoting their own software products, in which India still has no major global presence or players.

The public sector, which had the capability and scale to absorb new or updated technologies, was hamstrung and deliberately held back. And no major gain was made during this entire period in enhancing self-reliance and autonomous capability by Indian private sector industries.

During the UPA dispensation, efforts were also made to adopt counter-balancing welfare-oriented positions closer to the older Congress orientation.

The Right to Information (RTI) Act, amendments to the Forest Rights Act, advances to the public distribution system in the form of the Food Security Act, and the impactful National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and efforts to protect the environment and people’s rights from corporate inroads were some of the major rights-based welfare measures put in place during this period. Many of these legislative, executive or regulatory measures were taken in response to demands and push from progressive forces and civil society organizations. Other positive experiments included the campaign-based and mass mobilization volunteer-based Total Literacy Programme catalyzed and led by AIPSN/BGVS in the earlier period, and the later Right to Education (RtE) Act during the UPA dispensation. However, all these measures and other rights-based approaches saw headwinds and even reversals due to pressure from neo-liberal forces both within the government and outside, including during the successor BJP-NDA governments.

Pressure from the strong Left presence in Parliament supporting the UPA also provided some protection to the people from some potentially harmful neo-liberal policies, such as opening up insurance to the private sector and major modifications to the Indian Patents Act as demanded by global capitalism, measures that were resisted and rejected in Parliament. Provisions still retained in the Patents Act continue to enable effective self-reliance especially to the domestic pharma industry.

Present phase

As if with a vengeance, the BJP-led Governments of 2014 and 2019 have aggressively pushed neo-liberal economic policies since coming to power, along with retrograde social policies and serious undermining of “the idea of India” as embodied in the independence struggle and the Constitution, aided and abetted by non-State Hindutva forces.

Increasing inequality

It is no surprise that income inequalities have widened even further than before, and multi-billionaires and crony capitalists believed to be close to the ruling establishment have amassed huge additional wealth during recent years, even during the lockdown and nationwide economic slowdown. 50 new billionaires were added in India during 2020, and wealth of Indian billionaires increased by 35% or almost Rs.13 lakh crores during 2020 at a time when millions of Indians were without source of income or were walking thousands of kilometers to their original villages from cities where there was no work available. The World Inequality Report 2021 states that the top 10% of Indians hold 57% of the national income, and the bottom 50% hold just 13%. It also finds that the top 1% of the population own 33% of national wealth. Such is modern neo-liberal capitalism, avidly promoted by the present government and their supporters, along with promises of further concessions to MNCs and domestic corporates especially crony capitalists, de-regulation across all sectors, further dismantling and privatization of PSUs, virtual sale of national assets, de-unionization and casualization of labour and other “reforms.”

Demographic dividend or growing handicap?

India currently has a substantial youth population, what demographers call a “youth bulge,” with over 600 million persons under the age of 25. Development experts believe this ‘demographic dividend” can be a tremendous asset for the future, provided these youth receive proper basic and higher education and appropriate skills, especially since comparable countries including China have a rapidly ageing population. On the other hand, if India fails to build the capabilities of its young population, un-skilled and under-educated youth could also form the basis for deep social unrest and undesirable socio-political tendencies.

As things stand today, India’s higher education system, despite its considerable expansion in recent times albeit largely with private colleges and universities of uncertain quality, India’s higher education enrolment rates are 20% less than i.e. far below comparable middle-income countries like Brazil or China. Various studies have shown that over 60% of engineering graduates remain unemployed, and close to 50% of all graduates have been found to be unemployable in any skilled occupation! Other available statistics show that around 27% of India’s youth are thus excluded from education, employment or skills.

Unfortunately, neither the NEP 2020 nor the Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (STIP) address these inter-related issues of low access to quality education, deep inequities in education and employment, poor linkages between the education system and employment opportunities, and the urgent need to rapidly upgrade skills and education at all levels if India is to advance in the global economy in the knowledge era.

NEP 2020 contains no reference to the industrial and economic context, simply assuming that higher education in any form will somehow meet present and future demands. On the contrary, NEP’s proposal to terminate the system of affiliating universities with widely dispersed colleges will inevitably lead to closure of numerous colleges especially in smaller towns and rural or semi-urban areas, further exacerbating social inequities and reducing access to higher education for rural and other disadvantaged populations.

 

Privatization of Education & Health

During the neo-liberal phase including under the present dispensation, the health delivery and health education system has been increasingly tilting towards private players and tertiary curative services to the extent that around 75% of hospitals and tertiary health facilities in India are in the private sector, and thus oriented towards better-off sections who can afford these services. In this context, it is not surprising that insurance-based services have gained ground rapidly, and even government departments and PSUs are now reimbursing employees’ expenses at private hospitals etc, thus further strengthening the private health care sector rather than a more affordable and accessible public health system. The dominance of the private sector, and the weakness of the public health care system, is such that the common people of India have to incur over 60% of out-of-pocket expenditures on health.

All these structural weaknesses in public health have been cruelly in evidence during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the exception of Kerala which showed how a more effective public health system could be built and run even in India through long-term consistent public investments and decentralized administration.

The overall situation is made worse by serious deficits in doctors, nurses and other paramedical personnel. Whereas medical education has expanded considerably in recent decades, costs of such education have also increased substantially while, at the same time, quality of education has suffered. These trends have also led to brain drain of qualified personnel, and high costs in India have also driven students to seek medical education abroad and falling into a debt trap as a result.

Very similar processes are underway in engineering and technical education as well. The proliferation of poorly regulated private engineering colleges with poor facilities and equipment has resulted in producing under-qualified engineers who find it difficult to get suitable jobs, particularly when industries in India are so largely based on imported technologies requiring less engineering talent compared to indigenous industries based on innovative technologies.

The proposals in NEP 2020 will further aggravate these tendencies due to NEP’s emphasis on private universities and commercialization and “vocationalization” of educational services, without any correlation to demand for human resources, or industrial and developmental policies that would shape this demand, with a tacit assumption that the educational courses offered by universities would somehow correspond to evolving market demand. High fees of around Rs.2.5 lakhs for 4-year “vocational” undergraduate courses have already started in many Colleges/ Universities under NEP but with students not having any information about the acceptance of these qualifications by employers and the future potential of these qualifications.

Privatization of PSUs and State Assets

The Government is currently on a massive spree of privatization, handing over PSUs to the private sector for a song, selling or leasing infrastructure like ports, airports, roads, railways, railway stations and all kinds of assets which had been acquired through public resources over the decades. With a non-existent or toothless competition commission, not just huge corporations but also monopolies or duopolies are being created in sector after sector such as telecom, retail etc with MNCs or overseas companies or investors having a huge share. Private monopolies are far worse than state monopolies which are at least accountable to parliament, whereas the former leave consumers with no protection given poor regulation.

All these measures are being taken with little or no regulation, following the classical neo-liberal paradigm, not being followed any more in that undiluted form even by most advanced capitalist countries. In fact, in Europe, the UK and even the US, a process of re-nationalization or re-municipalization is underway in public utilities, railways etc. Regulatory capture is being practiced by the State itself, wherein the regulator does not act as a check on corporates, rather the regulator itself supports corporates in their ventures and in getting around government checks. In fact in most cases, the regulator’s mandate is itself is defined as including support to the growth of the private sector!

Dismantling Environmental Regulations

Even during the election campaign preceding the 2014 general elections, the party which was later to form the government made it clear that it believed that environmental regulations were an obstacle to economic growth through mining, other industries, infrastructure and commercial projects. This was translated into action soon after the new Government was installed by converting the different regulatory systems under the Ministry of Environment as bodies to facilitate corporate interests and projects in ecologically sensitive areas rather than protecting the latter. This was made a major element of the government’s efforts to improve its ranking in the global “ease of doing business” index.

Environmental de-regulation is now being pursued aggressively by the present Government through various means such as executive notifications modifying existing rules and procedures, packing decision-making expert committees, proposing major changes in rules and procedures. All these are being done without any legislative backing and, in those cases where the proposals are opened up for public response, the time given is extremely limited, often two weeks or so, even if the proposals involve major changes to existing regulations or potentially greater threats to the environment.

Major dilutions have been made to the Coastal Zone Regulations and so-called “linear projects” such as power-lines, pipelines, highways and railway lines have been given exception for passing through forests and even sanctuaries. Environmental Impact Assessments have been reduced to mere formalities, with project holders allowed to prepare their own EIA through consultants. Packed approval committees have made approvals the norm and rejections rare.

Attempt was made in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic to ram through sweeping changes in EIA requirements, approval conditions and procedures through a Draft EIA Notification Amendment 2020 which, initially, gave only 30 days notice for public comments. The Draft removed the very requirement for EIA and public hearings for a wide range of project types, did not permit public objections to EIA violations which were also sought to be condoned after minor fines, and placed a whole range of projects outside EIA purview on non-transparent grounds of “national security.” After huge protests, several extensions and large-scale negative comments including charges of the Notification being in explicit violations of apex Court orders, the Notification has been kept in abeyance.

However, its various provisions are now sought to be implemented in practice through executive actions and clear trickery to circumvent provisions, such as granting EIA to 100km stretches of the Char Dham Highway in the fragile Himalayan region rather than the whole highway project of close to 900km. Similar efforts were made recently through Amendments to the Forest Rights Act, seeking to circumvent rights of tribals and other forest dwellers by redefining different categories of Forests and procedures to allow easy approvals for violations and removing large areas from the definition of forests thus enabling conversion of large areas of forests into lands for commercial or industrial projects.

Wrong idea of Self-Reliance

The big belief, and break from the early post-Independence past, especially from the 1990s onwards has been that self-reliance is an outmoded concept, technologically an unnecessary effort to “reinvent the wheel” when any country can simply buy the latest technology from somewhere. This Government even believed it could build a modern defence industry in India through FDI! This policy has predictably fallen flat on its face for obvious reasons — no country will part with its advanced technology for love or for money. In India, the myth spread by the present dispensation is that domestic manufacturing of MNC or other foreign corporation’s products is self-reliance or “atma nirbharta!” It is not! Even when products are made in India, the MNC never parts with critical know-how, so that major technology always remains with the MNC. If true self-reliance were to be achieved, the know-how and technology is absorbed, and the Indian entity develops the next generation of the technology on its own. Contrary to the situation and endeavours during early decades of Indian independence and strenuous efforts, India is now well on its way towards technological dependence which will ultimately threaten the long cherished strategic autonomy.

India is today mostly a good market for foreign or MNC goods, even if they are sometimes made or assembled in India, such as automobiles or white goods or cell phones. Even the largest Indian private corporations, except a few in the single digits, are junior partners of MNCs or other foreign entities, have developed no autonomous S&T capabilities despite having been around for many decades, and make few products of global standard or own a global brand.

While the world is now on the verge of the “fourth industrial revolution” comprising 5G, AI, robotics and further automation, autonomous vehicles, electric or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, renewable energy storage and so on, India has been left staring at a future where we are no higher up the technological or value ladder than we used to be. With the Indian private sector not interested in R&D or developing indigenous capability, and the government hell-bent on destroying the public sector who could have undertaken the tasks, as the few remaining PSUs in atomic energy, space, defence are showing even today, the future is not looking bright for the country. Other countries eyeing the future are investing huge amounts of public funds in R&D in strategically identified sectors, without which this task is next to impossible since even large global corporations find it difficult to carry the load by themselves.

The S&T and Innovation Policy (STIP) shows no acknowledgement of this, and continues to shy away from large public investment in R&D, and imagines that private and foreign investment would somehow appear. NEP too shows no real awareness of the research, human resources and institutional structures of the future economy and related technologies, both in white and blue collar education and skill development. In the present governance structure and in the neo-liberal paradigm, there is also no room for planning as such, with Niti Aayog as well as private and MNC consultancies engaging essentially in guess-work or following ideological prescriptions. The education system has deteriorated to the extent that industrialists repeatedly lament a lack of suitably skilled and educated manpower as the second of industry’s major problems in India along with poor infrastructure.

Changing the Idea of India

Apart from the economic, technological and social aspects, the present Government is also dragging the country far away from the Constitutional values and the Idea of India, marked by unity in diversity, plurality of cultures, language and lifestyles, freedom and pluralism of opinion, and promotion of scientific temper.

The imposition of the ruling dispensation’s  own ideology and core political beliefs on the whole nation, and the complete intolerance towards dissent and plurality of opinion, including evidence-based disputation, has been another characteristic of the present phase, marking a sharp departure from Constitutional values and the Idea of India.

This Government, aided by Hindutva forces, has put majoritarian Hindutva and “cultural nationalism” at the forefront, undermining the secular state, pluralism and unity in diversity which holds this country together and which is admired the world over. Over the past seven-odd years, the nation has been torn apart by majoritarian, discriminatory and often violently pushed policies like the CAA-NPR-NRC, brutal lynchings and harassment of minority community citizens on the pretext of cow-slaughter, “love jihad,” or any other pretext. Traditional food habits of many communities in different parts of the country, from the North-East to Kerala, are under attack. Attempts are being made to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking States in myriad ways, insisting that constructed Vedic-Sanskritic past is the repository of all knowledge, the only true “history” and the only worthwhile tradition worthy of respect and being called Indian. All these ideas are given pride of place in the NEP.

Leading lights of the government and the ruling dispensation have repeatedly sought to impose their unsubstantiated views on ancient Vedic-Sanskritic science on a par with modern science, such as availability of the internet during the Mahabharata, advanced cosmetic surgery as evidenced by Lord Ganesha’s elephant head fitting seamlessly on a human body etc. All critics of such views, and those who defend evidence-based reasoning and scientific temper, are attacked as westernized and anti-national. The Constitutional ideals of unity of diversity and respect for all religions and cultures in this vast country are sought to be drowned under a single monolithic majoritarian “Hindu-Hindi” culture. In parallel, the federated system of governance by States and the Union is being trampled under a new unitary structure, contrary to the Constitutional system and subsumed under numerous centralizing schemes such as “One Nation, one everything.”

Pluralism of opinion has been repeatedly attacked by the present dispensation in different ways and context. Universities such as in Hyderabad, JNU, IITs in Chennai and Mumbai have been under constant attack, including through organized physical assaults, including for hosting lectures on topics disliked by the ruling dispensation or encouraging critical thinking. Books, plays, poems and films have been attacked. Champions of scientific temper and critical thought such as Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M.Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh were murdered allegedly by Hindutvavadi forces. All these are attacks not just on specific issues, but on pluralism of opinion and critical thinking itself. This is crucial, not just for the Peoples Science Movement but for scientific temper itself. Science and creative thinking cannot flourish without pluralism of opinion and freedom of expression, or in an atmosphere of blind subservience to authority.

The present dispensation consciously and deliberately refuses to follow evidence-based reasoning and governance. Instead, evidence is manipulated or manufactured to suit its own pre-conceived decisions, as revealed by withdrawal of governmental reports showing contrary data and hence conclusions, pressures on premiere autonomous research institutions to tailor data to suit government narratives.

This was clearly in evidence during the Covid-19 pandemic when even the opinions of leading scientists in government-appointment committees were repeatedly ignored. Numerous international scholars, human rights organizations and activists, have faced censorship, refusal of permission to enter or do research in India, with government attempting to require academic institutions to seek permission before organizing even virtual webinars! The present dispensation’s policy of communal and other polarizations raises paramount questions about the nation’s future. If a country is divided within itself, how can it work with a common zeal for the common good? If a country has no friends and a poor reputation internationally, with no soft power, how can it play a major leave alone leading role in the comity of nations and advance the interests of its citizens? If a country does everything it can to stifle critical thinking, how can its youth lead the country in the knowledge era?

India desperately needs to restore its post-independence identity as a forward looking country, building its autonomous self-reliant knowledge especially in science and technology for the global economy of tomorrow, promote its major public sector industries to achieve these goals along with those private entities with a commitment and dedication to achieve self-reliance in India. India desperately needs to re-establish Constitutional values of unity of diversity so that all States, cultures and people of all religions can move forward determinedly each in their own unique way. India needs to take forward its values of plurality, freedom of expression, autonomy of governance institutions, strong anti-discrimination laws, and a planned and well-regulated economy keeping in mind socio-economic equity, environmental sustainability, protection of historically underprivileged populations and demands of the future global economy and technological ecosystem. None of this can happen without a robust public education system and effective primary health care system. Employment and livelihoods need to be ensured for the masses along with appropriate safety nets. Together these call for systematic planning and a welfare state.

For the present dispensation, it seems GDP growth and the “ease of doing business” are far more important that raising the living standards and promoting livelihoods of the mass of people. The present Government’s fascination with high-cost, grandiose infrastructure and constructions projects while ignoring the travails of the poor is accelerating. Cases in point are the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train, the Sardar Patel statue, the Central Vista and related projects in the national capital, Varanasi “beautification” projects even as the Ganga continues being filthy, the Sabarmati waterfront and, recently, the gaudy and incongruous Jalianwalabagh Memorial. An even more jazzed-up and unseemly Rs.1250 crores Memorial complex at Gandhi’s simple cottage structures in the Sabarmati Ashram. The long-standing goal of the Republic to establish a welfare state has been thrown to the winds in the most openly elitist and pro-business government since Independence.

Above all, no country can progress if its people are divided against each other. The British colonialists perpetuated their rule over the Indian sub-continent through their conscious policy of divide and rule, ultimately leading to partition of the country along religious lines. It was the strength of the independence movement that it brought together all religious, cultural, ethnic, linguistic and caste groupings together under a common umbrella to achieve the common goals of independence, progress and welfare of all, unity in diversity, equality before the law, freedom of expression and acceptance of pluralism and critical thinking. No country can progress if its people are divided against each other. 75 years after Independence, can we allow ourselves to be divided again?

The future beckons India, especially its youth. To achieve its due, India needs to re-generate, re-imagine and take forward the values and aspirations of its freedom movement in the contemporary context and learning from all the missteps, failures and missed opportunities over the years.

The Peoples Science Movement will take this message to the people during the year through grassroots dialogues and other mass contact programmes.

 

Need to uphold Constitution, Scientific Temper and Humanity in judicial interventions

Click here to see the press statement from AIPSN

 

Need to uphold Constitution, Scientific Temper and Humanity in judicial interventions

             All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN) expresses its unhappiness with the judgement of the Allahabad High Court in Javed vs UP state, issued on 1 Sept 2021, for citing several religion mythical scriptures as the culture of our nation and making observations that have no scientific basis (quote from judgment “Scientists believe that cow is the only animal that inhales oxygen and also exhales oxygen. Panchagavya is made out of cow’s milk, curds, ghee, urine and dung and is known to help in several incurable diseases. According to Hindu religion, 33 crore gods and goddesses reside in the cow” ) . In this case, Javed, who is on trial for killing a cow was denied bail.

AIPSN strongly objects to the lack of scientific temper and secularism in the observations given in the judgement, wherein a subset of scriptures of a specific religion are utilised and pronounced as the culture of our nation and importantly is used to deny bail to a human being.

India is a country with religious, linguistic, cultural, social, ethnic diversity which constitutes the “Idea of India“. Our freedom struggle united all against colonial oppression and fought to overthrow the colonial rule. That unity helped us to have our own Constitution. It is the duty of every citizen and those who take public office to uphold the Constitution to develop scientific temper, spirit of inquiry and humanism.  The observations in the Javed vs UP State case relating to the cow as the only animal that inhales and exhales oxygen and with special properties, attributed to its body and excreta, have no scientific basis.  Evolutionary biology has shown that all animals including cows and humans have a common origin and follow similar respiration physiology of inhaling air, from which part of oxygen is absorbed in the blood and exhaling carbon dioxide and other substances, like nitrogen and some amount of oxygen too.

AIPSN is shocked at the scientific fallacies in the judgement and is alarmed that these unscientific observations would be cited in later cases and may also create disharmony in our society. A rationalist and scientific approach is is always essential in a legal document. Leading legal personalities such as B.R. AmbedkarJustice V.R. Krishna Iyer of our country were very vocal in their opposition to pseudoscience and we and our judiciary should follow that path.

In the last few years, we have come across a large number of pseudoscientific statements made by government functionaries, both at the central government as well as various state governments. It seems the Indian Cow is one of the pet areas about which a lot of nonsensical stuff is uttered. The anti-science atmosphere created in such a process is reflected strongly in faith based judgement devoid of legal arguments, and with falsification of science. Such observations, as in the case, cited here, also goes against the secular fabric of our Indian constitution.

AIPSN notes with concern these observations reflected in this judgment as they are without scientific evidence going against the scientific temper while  foisting one community’s supposed beliefs upon the entire country and all its diverse cultures. AIPSN looks forward to appropriate corrective action.

We the people of India need to raise our voice against such attempts which disrupt the fabric of our nation. In this situation, AIPSN strongly rejects the faith based observations relating to the cow in the judgement arising in the Javed case as they are against secularism and scientific temper. We look forward to the display of scientific temper, thus upholding an important component of the Constitution, in all legal proceedings and judgements.

In particular, AIPSN appeals to the scientific community to protest against such unscientific proclamations that have the danger of creating cleavages in our society and also goes against our constitutional duty to protect scientific temper.

For clarifications contact:

P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN

gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101 @gsaipsn

 

All India Save Education Day on 05th September Teachers Day

Click here to read the Press Release for Save Education Day 5th Sept 2021

 

Click here to read the related AIFUCTO Circular AIFUCTO GS Circular 26.08.2021

Time has come for more vigorous protest against the stubborn and undemocratic attitude of the Government of India and showing our teeth against undemocratic, unscientific, retrograde and exclusionary nature of NEP.

Joint Forum for Movement on Education (JFME) considering the gravity of the situation has a given a call for All India Save Education Day on 05th September, 2021 to be more demonstrative of our protest against NEP to Save Education, Save Campus and Save Nation.

Please where ever possible organize demonstrative action either in front of Rajabhavan or State Capital or university or college campus on the day.

Submit memorandum to the state as well as Central government on our stand on NEP and also highlights state issues.

Organize JFME at your level and carry on the program.

Click here to read the related JFME Circular JFMECircular-22.08.2021

Click here to read the related JFME Statement JFME Joint Statement July 25

Click to read the AIPSN Campaign note in English and Hindi 

AIPSN Position Paper on Uttarakhand Disaster

click here to read the English pdf of the AIPSN-PositionPaper17Feb2021-Ukhand-Disaster

AIPSN Position Paper on Uttarakhand Disaster

17 Feb 2021

 

The disaster in Chamoli District, Uttarakhand on 7 February 2021 morning, in the region around the Nandadevi Biosphere Reserve, saw a large volume of fast moving flood waters carrying ice and snow, rocks, debris and mud come rushing down from high-altitude mountains. At the time of writing on 14 February 2021, over 58 persons have tragically lost their lives and 148 persons are still missing. Most were workers in different projects in the area, along with some local villagers, and another 150 or so remain missing. Many workers are feared trapped inside the tunnel of the badly damaged under-construction ADB-funded 520 MW NTPC Tapovan hydro-electric project on the Dhauliganga river. The small Rishiganga 13.2MW hydel project on the Rishiganga river, about 4km upstream near the village of Raini where the famous Chipko movement started, was completely destroyed. At its peak, the flow was reportedly  around 30,000 cumec (cubic metres per second) with a 10-15 metre wave in narrow parts of the river. The deluge continued downstream past Joshimath where monitoring stations apparently showed the waters at more than 3 metres above the previous Highest Flood Line recorded during the infamous 2013 disaster in Uttarakhand resulting from extreme rainfall over several days and flash floods.  Several other hydel Projects nearby, such as the World Bank-funded 444 MW Pipalkoti dam still being built and the 400 MW Vishnuprayag dam, were also threatened but damage assessment is awaited.

The exact cause and circumstances of the disaster are yet to be fully determined. Based on what is currently known, the earlier speculation about a glacial lake burst is probably incorrect. It now seems, based on satellite imagery in India and abroad, and preliminary observations by specialist Indian teams from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG), Dehradun, that a large weakened section of a rocky section of the Raunthi mountain-top fell over on an over-hanging portion of a glacier, and carried along an avalanche of large  quantities of recently accumulated snow, rocks and debris. This massive avalanche-cum-landslide seems to have settled in the Raunthi river on the valley floor, blocking it for several days, and then bursting through in the deluge witnessed on the 7 February. Recent reports suggest formation of another large pool behind large amounts of accumulated rocks and debris, threatening another high river flow event.

It is indeed tragic that most of the dead so far seem to be workers in different infrastructure and hydro-electric power projects. According to both Central and State governments, these and other infrastructure projects were supposed to benefit the region. However, this has long been questioned by environmentalists, local residents as well as by many experts and civil society organizations that remain of the opinion that such projects should be scaled down and assessed carefully before being launched. Decisions need to be taken keeping in mind the precautionary principle in view of the fragile mountains, low carrying capacity of towns and other settlements in the area, and high risks posed by floods, landslides etc. At present, it is not known if there is any evidence pointing to these infrastructure projects having any role in triggering the rock and glacier break-off rock and related avalanche and landslide. But, as discussed below, they certainly contribute to the magnitude and impact of such disasters, which therefore can never be termed as purely “natural” disasters or “acts of god.”

Ironically though, in the present case, these very projects and those working on them, including local villagers, have themselves become victims of a disaster.

 

Role of Climate Change & Infrastructure Projects

Regardless of the issue of causation, this disaster is nevertheless a grim reminder of the potential impact and dangers of mindless so-called “development” projects, ignoring all warnings and expert opinion, brushing aside environmental assessments, and implemented badly, all without thought about consequences.

Two major aspects stand out which cause, or contribute to, similar disasters in mountain areas in India especially in the Western Himalayas, namely climate change and thoughtless infrastructure and other construction projects in the region.

Man-made global warming has resulted in rapid melting and shrinking of glaciers along with melting of polar ice caps. The Himalayas are often called “the third pole” since they are the third largest reservoir of fresh water in the form of ice and snow. More recent studies, both internationally and in India, have shown that melt rates are much higher at present than in earlier decades and, in India, more rapidly in the Western Himalayas than in the East. Glacier melt often leads to formation of glacial lakes or large pools of water. Sometimes under pressure or due to external forces or impacts, the barriers of these glacial lakes break, releasing large volumes of water leading to flash flooding downstream, as was earlier speculated in the present case. Rapid melting of glaciers in India therefore lead to large-scale instability in the Himalayan region with increasing probability of increase in river water flows and flash flooding, posing a serious but as yet poorly predictable threat and imminent danger to downstream settlements and infrastructure, besides medium-term hydrological impacts on the whole Indo-Gangetic basin.

On top of this, there has been, especially in recent times, an irresponsible rush to build numerous roads, power plants and other infrastructure in the region without adequately assessing the potential environmental and societal impact, addressing the geological and tectonic instability of the region, and the carrying capacity of settlements and the hills. The Himalayas are a young and unstable mountain range, located in the most earthquake prone seismological Zones IV and V, subject to frequent landslides, with cloudbursts and flash floods carrying tons of rocks and other debris, causing havoc even normally. Even the on-going unplanned expansion of towns and settlements, beyond their carrying capacity, is already adding pressure on the regional environment through larger populations, new buildings outside the town limits, new hotels, new road construction or widening, depletion or even disappearance of water sources, and tree felling leading to loosening of soil and rocks which increases landslips and rainwater run-off leading to floods in local streams and rivers.

 

Rash of construction projects

The current rash of construction projects, expedited and pushed through under the present government, has taken such destruction to new and dangerous levels. A massive number of hydro-electric projects are now under construction in the region. At present there are around 100 dams in the State with many more under construction. According to some estimates, over 450 hydel projects are planned, meaning there could be one project every few dozen kilometers! Several of these are supposed to be run-of-the-river projects but, in practice, also involve at least some impounding of water and/or much construction  activity. The construction of these dams and hydel projects involve tree-felling with lackadaisical compensatory afforestation, and a lot of construction, often using dynamite and other questionable techniques triggering further instability in already unstable hill regions. Construction debris are often simply dumped into the river in violation of procedure, or along the roadside in so-called “designated spots,” but frequently end up in rivers below, further blocking the river flow and raising the river bed, thus increasingly the potential for flooding.

Over the years, these projects have led to large-scale protests by villagers, environmentalists and experts. In the wake of the 2013 Uttarakhand disaster, a Supreme Court appointed expert committee recommended cancellation of most of the proposed projects, which a second Committee appointed also endorsed. A third hand-picked committee thereafter appointed overturned these recommendations, but many projects thus approved continue to be under disputation. A leading expert, and Chairman of the SC-appointed committee, has opined  that no dam or hydel project should be taken up in the para-glacial zone of 2,200 metres altitude or above on safety grounds.

Massive road construction is also underway, notably under the Rs.14,000 Crores Char Dham Project started in 2016 linking the four major pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand with over 900 km of roads including the Char Dham Mahamarg highway, hotels and other infrastructure. Environmental clearance for the project was obtained in 2018 through aggressive push from the highest levels of the central government, who also amended the EIA Notification 2006 to exempt road projects under 100km in length from EIA. Using this subterfuge, the Char Dham Highway project was divided into 53 projects of under 100km length and given clearance without any environmental appraisal using the kind of norm-twisting modifications proposed in the Draft EIA 2020 Notification!

A majority of members of the packed High Powered Committee to review the project recommended keeping the road width to 10 metres, involving cutting of the hill upto 24 metres, as earlier approved by the Supreme Court which, however, had later ordered restricting road width to 5.5 metres but work had meanwhile speedily covered a substantial length of the highway at the larger width. Road cutting and scooping of hillsides have been done in a non-standard and dangerous manner including through dynamiting, often with almost vertical slopes against all protocol and sharply increasing prospects of landslides, and without stabilization and fresh plantation to help bind the slopes. Debris is also very often dumped carelessly and ends up in the river below. Speed, greater profits for the companies involved, and the headlong rush to build infrastructure, not safety, is clearly the priority.

Besides the direct damage caused in the already unstable region, all this only worsens impacts of future flooding events. Debris raises the river bed, increasing chances of flooding and submergence of riverside infrastructure and townships as happened in the 2013 disaster. Debris also enters dams and power plant races reducing dam life and damaging generating equipment.

 

Way forward

With the rationale of boosting tourism in the region, regardless of carrying capacity and fragility of the mountain ecosystem, Kedarnath town, which suffered extensive damage in 2013, is being rebuilt with little thought to the impact on the surrounding environment and the vulnerability of the town to further flooding and other events like in 2013. Alternative suggestions such as building residential infrastructure at lower altitudes with regulated pilgrim traffic to the temple have been brushed aside.

Monitoring and observation of this region for extreme weather events, landslides and slope instability, and glacial observation, is also almost non-existent.

While there is some indication that there is some slowing down of dam-building and hydel projects in the region, in so many other ways various highly risky and environmentally damaging infrastructure projects continue to be undertaken in this eco-sensitive area. It is essential that this disastrous course be reversed without delay; otherwise we will be left only with post-disaster analyses in future.

 

In light of the tragedies of the 2013 and 2021 disasters in the Himalayan region of Uttarakhand, a safety and environmental review should be urgently conducted of all hydro-electric, road building and infrastructure currently underway and planned, based on which these should be suitably modified or cancelled.

 

 

For clarifications contact:

D. Raghunandan 9810098621

P. Rajamanickam, General Secretary, AIPSN gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101 @gsaipsn

 

‘Science for social revolution’: People’s Science Movements and democratizing science in India

click here for the pdf of the article   

Authors:

Venkateswaran T.V.

Abstract:

Often, new social movements engaged with science and society are characterised as contesting objectivity; the neutrality of modern science seeking to legitimise ‘lay perspectives’. It has been an article of faith among scholars to view third world movements as anti-science, anti-modernity and post-developmentalist. This commentary describes ideological framework, modes of action and organisation of the All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN), one of the People’s science movement (PSMs) active for more than the past four decades. They dispute the dominant development trajectory and science and technology-related policies for reinforcing the existing inequities. Nevertheless, they see ‘science’ as a powerful ally for realising their radical emancipatory vision of ‘science for social revolution’. Mobilising ‘science activists’ as unique alternate communicators, they strive for lay-expert collaboration. The canonical framing of third world social movements as postcolonial and anti-modern does not capture this unique case from India. Further studies are required to tease out such strands of social movements elsewhere.

 

People’s Manifesto on Literacy and Education of AIPSN and BGVS

People’s Manifesto on Literacy and Education

Please see here in EnglishHindi , Odiya , Tamil , Telegu

of All India People’s Science Network and Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti.
AIPSN and BGVS have been doing an all India campaign by conducting Jan Shiksha Samvad (People’s Education Dialogue) at village, Panchayat, Block and District level in 23 States of India.
The State Level Samvad will be 10 th 14th April in State Capital of 23 States.
Individuals and organisations are requested to endorse the Manifesto.
President and Secretary   President and Secretary
BGVS                                     AIPSN

Ask How Campaign 2019

Subka Desh Hamara Desh:

Ask How Campaign

The Ask How campaign  brings awareness to people about the rights that are enshrined in our constitution and how these constitutional rights are to be safeguarded from fundamentalist and neoliberal onslaught. 

 In Defense of the Republic:

Remembering Bose, Nehru, Ambedkar and Gandhi

The Constitution of India was passed in the Constituent Assembly on 26th November, and came into effect on 26th January 1950. The constitution declares India a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, assuring its citizens justice, equality and liberty, and endeavors to promote fraternity.

This meant that all sections of people – irrespective of race, religion or caste – had full rights to the nation, including the right to a decent standard of living, embedded in the Indian Constitution. It was for a secular India that Mahatma Gandhi was martyred. The secular republic, and democracy, both social and economic, are under threat today.
Dr.B.R.Ambedkar, in his speech to the Constituent Assembly made clear that democracy meant both social and economic democracy; without this, democracy would only be in name. He stated in his Address to the Constituent Assembly, 1949:

“In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In Politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?”

It is this vision of economic democracy that united Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose with Dr.Ambedkar. In their vision, planning and building a public sector was an absolute necessity not for just industrial and agricultural regeneration of India, but also re-distributing the benefits of development to all sections of its people. It is only by state intervention in the economy that an independent India would be able to free India from absolute poverty, famine, abysmal life expectancy and illiteracy that the British colonial rule had imposed on India.

Let us remember all the four stalwarts of our Republic – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. Ambedkar, and Subhash Chandra Bose – in the week of 23rd January, Subhash Bose’s Birthday, to 30th January, when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Godse. It is important for us to remember these four leaders for what they represent:  a truly democratic, secular republic. Particularly, when we see violent attacks on minorities and dalits, with tacit or, open support of the government. The All India Peoples Science Network will campaign with the people on the promise of secular democratic republic that the national movement had created, and oppose all attempts to derail it.

We see repeated attempts to pit Ambedkar, Bose, Patel and Gandhi against Nehru. Sections that do this, believe that our memories are weak, and that we have forgotten our past. Yes, of course all these leaders had differences among themselves. They were leaders with strong views, and were willing to disagree, sometimes sharply with each other, on the direction that the national movement should take. But unlike leaders in the RSS–Hindu Mahasabha, the ideological founders of the BJP, and the Muslim League, they all fought against the British for an independent India.

Bose mentions contemptuously how the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League were pro-British, and kept themselves out of the national struggle. He and Nehru believed in planning and in science to lift India out of its desperate poverty. Both drew inspiration from the socialist experiment in Russia, which in two decades, had lifted it out of extreme backwardness, and turned into a modern nation. They were both deeply secular and socialistic in their outlook. Nehru, unlike Bose, was clear about the threat that fascist forces represented to the world. Bose saw the Axis powers as an enemy’s enemy – the British was his main enemy – and was willing to ally temporarily with them. But unlike the RSS–Hindu Mahashba, they were united in their vision of planning the economy, economic democracy and science in a free India. Not in mumbo jumbo science, which our council of ministers led by the PM, seems to believe.

The Planning Commission carried forward the vision of the Planning Committee, set up by Bose as the President of the Indian National Congress in 1938, and headed by Nehru. Its winding up and replacement by a think-tank called Niti Ayog, is an indication that economic democracy is no longer on the agenda of the current BJP-led NDA government. Lest we forget, Bose, as much as Nehru, was an ardent believer in planning, and talked about the need for a Planning Commission to guide the government in an independent India.

The other two planks of Indian national movement and democracy were its outlook to religious minorities and dalits. Ambedkar, Bose, Nehru and Gandhi, all believed that India must be a secular republic for all its people. Let us not forget that the Indian constitution was opposed bitterly by the RSS that had argued that India should have a constitution based on Manusmriti – India’s ancient legal text. That Manusmriti is the basic text of a caste divided society, and incorporates inequality between castes, and men and women in its core. The RSS and the Jana Sangh ridiculed Ambedkar, calling him a Lilliput, while extolling Manu and Manusmriti. The Organizer, the mouthpiece of the RSS, had stated in its November 30, 1949 issue:
“The worst about the new constitution  of Bharat is that there is nothing Bhartiya about it. The drafters of the Constitution have incorporated in it elements of British, American, Canadian, Swiss and sundry other constitutions… But in our constitution, there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.”

It is not surprising that the other development of the Indian Constitution of affirmative action, namely reservation, in education and employment, was opposed by the RSS. Even today, the RSS leaders speak against reservation, that it promotes separatism and how it should be wound up.

The recent attacks on minorities and Dalits, the movement to project the lives of cows being far more important than that of human beings, is an attack on our secular and democratic values. It is the same forces that attack minorities that also attack reservation, women’s right to love and marry freely, and the way we want to live. Every facet of our culture and democracy is today under attack, from freedom of speech to the right to practice our religion and our culture.

This is not just an attack on our minorities. These attacks are taking place when India has again become as unequal as it was under the British; or what the French economist Piketty called it: from British Raj to Billionaire Raj. When crony capitalism is ruling the country; where 1% of people own wealth equal to 73% of Indians. There is an attack on the fundamental constitutional values of the republic – social and economic democracy, and no discrimination against any section of society based on caste or creed. This is what we have to fight against, this is our battle for a sovereign, socialist, secular democratic republic that our forefathers fought for during the independence movement.