In his 2016 article, Dr Giri makes a distinction between “meek investment” and “strategic investment”. Meek investment is on near future technological goals. In his answer to Swarajya queries, he spells this out further, “Where scientists pursuing basic sciences need to interact more with funding agencies and philanthropists, scientists who are capable of developing spin-off products or technologies have to interact with industries. It is a great mix of demand, viability, attractiveness, implementation and outreach that determines the success of a scientific project.”

Dr Tessy Thomas, popularly known as 'missile woman' of India also emphasises the need for youth to take up initiatives like start-ups to help the government fight challenges in sectors like health, environment and education.

Perhaps, that is what the government is aiming at when it cut to half the funding for CSIR and asked it to generate self-supporting revenue from its own projects. What we are hearing are perhaps the tremors from the old order, when it is forced to yield place to new.



Dr Giri also has a suggestion for the marching group of scientists. He says, they should modify their demand three which wants to ‘ensure that the education system imparts only ideas that are supported by scientific evidence,’ and merge it with demand two to create the following more potent demand which is to “ensure that all the state education boards, its affiliate sub-boards, and independent educational organisations, providing any kind of education to all children and young adults living in India, should be obliged to impart only ideas that are supported by scientific evidence and stop the propagation of unscientific, obscurantist ideas and religious or political bigotry. These institutions should be obliged to develop scientific temper, human values, and spirit of inquiry in conformance with the Article 51A of the Constitution of the Republic of India."

Support Of Political Luddites?

Unfortunately, again, such well-intentioned and thorough suggestion of scientists who want root and branch reform in the stagnant scientific establishment of India may not carry weight with the campaigners. Because judging from their most vocal supporters, their aim seems to be more politics than science.



The person who has drafted a statement for 'writers to support a call for a March for Science on 9 August in several Indian cities' and who is sharing it with the who’s who in the Indian 'eminent intellectuals' fraternity is writer Githa Hariharan. She is the convener of Indian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (InCACBI), which itself is Indian wing of global #BDS movement. The American Association for the Advancement of Science,(AAAS) the world's largest general science society has already condemned such boycotts “as antithetical to the positive role of free scientific inquiry in improving the lives of all citizens of the world, and in promoting cooperation among nations, despite political differences”.

It is again interesting if not telling that the group of scientists who are planning this demonstration are not averse to getting the help of political Luddites who work to stall technological and scientific collaboration between nations for the welfare of people.

Scientific Secular-Humanist Approach Versus Communal Sensational Journalism

On the face of it, for a democracy such a campaign by scientists is a healthy sign. However, what mars the campaign is the bundling of the just demands with the political rhetoric of a specific dispensation. The appeal says: "Promoting scientific bent of mind can certainly help improve the social health of our country where incidents of witch hunting, honour killing and mob lynching are reported regularly."



The campaign against lynching has been proved to be highly partisan. For example, an altercation over a train seat between two groups resulted in a stabbing incident in which a teenager was killed in June 2017. That the attackers happened to be Hindu and that they hurled certain religious slurs against the teenager, was highlighted by a section of national media. Though the primary motive was neither religious nor related to ‘beef’, these slurs were highlighted and made to look as if they were the reason.

There is room to believe that this highly communal and unscientific attitude in reporting was aimed to create a fear psychosis among the minority community and convert it into a vote bank. Incidentally on February 2017, another Muslim teenager was stabbed to death near Mysore for refusing to join a radical Islamist group. Unlike the previous one where an altercation over a seat deteriorated into ugly hurling of religious slurs and inhuman stabbing, here the very motive was communal and the Muslim youth stood his ground against radicalisation and got killed. Yet the campaigners never saw it fit to include the stabbing of Luqman in their campaign.

One does hope that the scientists, who have given call for the march, would demand curtailment of such unscientific communal reporting for the sake of political vested interests and sensationalism in their campaign for scientific temper.

Vested Ideological Interest as ‘Scientific Temper’?

However, most probably that may remain only a wish. Because among the many things which ail Indian science, is the socialist state sponsored mindset that combines ideological vested interest with terms like ‘scientific temper’.

A case in point is the Method of Science Exhibition (MoSE) which instead of being an exhibition explaining methods of science became a campaign for Marxism. Thus the exhibition had no panels for Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn. But it had panels on Lenin and Marx. In their panels even Darwin was presented without mentioning his important contribution ‘natural selection’. Even physicist Bernal, who sided with Stalinist USSR during the Lysenko episode was praised in the ‘method of science’ exhibition.