A report on a get together sponsored by the PPST Foundation. (Mahabalipuram, July, 1990)
This July, the PPST Foundation had hosted a 2-day get together of various activists, thinkers and writers who have in the last 10-15 years been concerned with the issue of evolving alternatives In various spheres of our national life. The occasion was the completion of 10 years of the PPST endeavour. Dr.C.N. Krishnan, who Initiated the event, observed that one of the purposes of the get together was to derive inputs which would be useful in steering the course of PPST in the future. This was one of the purposes of meeting. The other, perhaps more significant, purpose was to get the understanding of the participants on how the situation evolved in the past, and how it was likely to move in the coming few years. Each participant was requested to dwell on this large issue, from his/her experience or standpoint relating to a more specific sphere of activity, such as health or environment. There were about 40 people who gathered at Mahabalipuram and 17 talks were delivered. In the following pages excerpts from these talks are presented. The arrangement of excerpts Is different from the order in which the talks were delivered. The meeting was a flexibly structured one, to enable maximum level of Interaction to take place. In reporting the presentations by the participants, a rearrangement in the order was felt necessary to take the issue from one of evolving alternatives or new efforts in the sphere of S & T, to large social movements.
Jhumur Lahiri
Since the last few years, partly on my own and partly through the inspiration from PPST, I have been observing the traditional steel making technology in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh. The manufacture of the high quality "wootz” steel had been practised in this region by artisans till the early part of this century. My close observations on the extant process revealed to me the complexity and the scale of operations involved, and the creativity of the artisans that goes into sustaining them. I was particularly interested and impressed by the design of the crucible used in this process - how a seemingly simple device is used to produce or maintain output characteristics over several production schedules.
The emerging national steel industry of the ‘twenties in this century seems to have been bothered more about capital etc., than about the involvement of such artisanal skills and creativity in the process. Because of such trends overall, we have moved into a situation where technology import has come to be considered imperative in various contexts. We now have the spectacle of highly trained Indian engineers in a number of R&D organisations merely copying down the blueprints of a technology or a process developed abroad. That’s our level of creativity now. How this deprives us of developing new initiatives in technology can be gauged from an example I've come across: in aircraft manufacture (for defence) certain types of rubber gaskets are used. Now, these are manufactured in India, but both the dies (for gasket manufacture) as well as the rubber needed are imported. The pretext is that this is part of the deal!
So, this issue of self-reliance in the technological sector is becoming important. The present method of project mode of funding technology development is totally inadequate. There is need to develop an integrated approach to technology development. Two important aspects which also need attention are the culture of the R&D lab., in India and the hierarchical structure that has come up. The present day culture of an R&D lab., is highly un-Indian, and tends to have a negative impact on the potential of the scientist. The hierarchical structure, the officer approach, divides the scientists and the technical assistants, preventing the much needed creative interaction. These issues must be addressed along with the more fundamental issue of the current design philosophies followed, which are inspired from the West; how to evolve a design philosophy rooted in our own context also needs to be addressed.
We have been involved in tackling the foundational, philosophical problems related to science in India and have not paid much attention to such issues. We must begin addressing them side by side our concerns in philosophy. The task initiated by PPST should not be limited by the perception of S&T in India as a monolith. It isn’t and the task must be carried out at different levels simultaneously.
S.Arunachalam
I have started out with the problem: if Indian scientists are doing work of quality, should they publish their findings in outstanding journals abroad, or should we establish journals in India which can carry such findings. In India, we have a record of running good scientific journals. C.V. Raman established the Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences in the Thirties, which had a reputation in the international scene for over two decades. Sankhya, which is published from the Indian Statistical Institute, is also known to be one of the finest journals in statistics in the world, and is a mark of the excellence achieved by the statistical scientists in India. Having a good journal in India will encourage one-to-one interaction among the practitioners by providing the necessary forum. This will considerably help in tackling the perceived lack of confidence among Indian scientists.
After 1970, when Raman passed away, those in charge of the Academy could not figure out how he had operated the journals of the Academy. He had operated them successfully, but had not told the method to any one! So, it was decided to bring in professionals to run the journal and that is how my own association with the Academy started. Between 1972 and now, the Academy launched publication of Pramana and Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics both of which are rated among the better journals published in this country., Recently, Current Science founded by Raman along the lines of Science and Nature, has also been reoriented to make it the kind of multi-disciplinary journal that it was intended to be. In all these efforts particularly in the case of the J. Astronomy & Astrophysics, the involvement of extremely capable scientists has been crucial in ensuring their success.
In India, we now have a large network of institutions involved in academic research but the scientists here generally have few channels to publish their results. The existing system of peer review in Indian journals is inadequate, because there is no interaction even amongst practitioners in the same discipline. Such lack of interaction, or knowledge/information concerning the work of others in the field is a serious hindrance in raising the standard of peer review, and the quality of the journals. The situation worsens when good papers are published abroad, depriving the Indian scientists of a chance of a good interaction. Among the journals published in India by the Academies/professional societies, for-profit publishers and by the research organisations such as CSIR or ICAR,the first type are among the best; this is because of the very nature of the involvement of scientists in them. The chances of quality change/improvement in such journals are high. This is despite the tendency in some academies
to turn them into private preserves, despite the known inability of the scientific community to evolve policies to govern itself!
I have noticed that the concept of using large funding to direct or improve the quality of research is not quite a workable one. This became clear to me when I performed a study of the publication output of research projects in physics/chemistry /lifesciences, funded by one of the largest agencies under the Union Government. Given our many other inadequacies, such as the defective award/reward system, it would not be easy to expect such efforts as funding alone to influence the rise of quality in Journals in India. It is my belief that voluntary effort, outside the government system of research organisations, has considerable potential in this respect and may be more fruitful.
S.N.Nagarajan
I consider myself an Eastern; or an Oriental Marxist. I am concerned about the verdict that modern science & technology has passed on us in the Third world - that our culture is useless, our science is useless, administration is useless, even we are useless. Modern science and technology, especially in the post-world war II phase has acted more openly as a wide ranging instrument of imperialism. It has carried in it immeasurable capacity for inflicting damage, both internal and external. But today it is being challenged by the rise of various protest movements, feminist movements, alternative life styles movements and so on. Unfortunately, intellectuals in India have not shown any inclination towards building up such movements here. On the other hand, the marxists here term them reactionary and work against them. This S&T 8is poison; and it is entering the body, the body politic. What we need now is a "Neelakanta'' model, whereby the spread of poison is arrested right at its entry. I am distressed to see that it is allowed to spread instead, but am convinced that what the dominant classes failed to check, the ordinary people will be able to bring under control.
C.V.Seshadri
I would like to title my talk "looking back, looking forward". As a practising scientist, I believe scientists in India have failed in their responsibility of interpreting their own work to the people. The politicians, and the media have taken upon themselves this task. As a result, we have things such as "Science, Engineering & Technology'' columns in dailies such as The Hindu, communicating to a larger audience what science should not be, containing nothing Indian. (I use “science” and "technology" interchangeably). Or we have a "Science, Technology & Electronics Department'' in the state of Tamil Nadu, partly because some of the leading politicians here wanted to control TV, and thought TV was electronics and vice versa. Ultimately, science in India is communicated popularly through books such as the "Tao of Physics'' or the “Dancing Wu Li Masters", and that’s a rather sad situation.
So, I ask mself: do scientists in India understand science; I believe even they don’t understand. Part of their problem is the English language in which the scientists are taught and trained to think. Usually, they think that this is really no problem at all but it is indeed a difficult problem. The semantic barrier to comprehending the nature of science is indeed formidable. There is a large, over-arching view of what science is - what is the nature of this knowledge, is it temporal or absolute etc., but questions of this kind are not addressed in our country. As a result, when a number of decisions affecting millions of people are clothed in the transparent layer of science, there is really no questioning in this country. There is, among scientists, no feeling of responsibility towards such decisions. How do you explain otherwise the complete disregard shown for the warnings of Harsh Gupta or V.K. Gaur in the matter of construction of Tehri Dam. I can quote my own experience: when I talked to a member of Planning Commission that electric power contributed only 3% of the total useful energy in this country, and that the proposed investment of over Rs.1,00,000 crores will not enhance this proportion over 4%, he said he knew it! This indifference arises because we have confused in our mind energy with electricity, and have not clearly enunciated for ourselves the aim that developing energy sources should be to generate more employment.
An allied problem is the lack of confidence among scientists when they double as policy makers. All we are prepared to do is “to demonstrate", "to conduct trials”, to “show off" to the white man - to prove to ourselves that we know his game. New ideas are not pushed enough; they are at “pilot stage” or at “demonstration” because there is real lack of confidence. There was a time when we thought we didn’t have time to learn - we had to “catch up", but that kind of approach never worked. We must realise now that Indian scientists or engineers must learn the new techniques themselves before it is imposed on them. But we often encounter the attitude : why reinvent the wheel; we need to because we need to write the manual for it. In the absence of such attitude, we have always been ridden with defective technologies from the West, which are full of gaps by design, so that we would be constrained to go back to them. We need to feel far more confident in handling such situations. The Indian mind is "colonialised" and this is time to correct it.
We must realise that this is a unique country; it has unique size, numbers, and has unique probems but we are not prepared to accept the responsibility for our own uniqueness. On the other hand, we have designed methods to run away from this country - most of our elite’s sons and daughters are settled abroad - when we find things getting to be difficult. Unless this changes, there cannot be any real scope for improvement. We cannot maintain links like this; we cannot follow the model of any other country, nor should we be interested in offering models to others. We must comprehend our own unique situation, and I believe cutting India off from the rest of the World would be a first step in achieving this. We need to pause and think before we proceed, and such isolation is essential in our context.
Darshan Shankar
When one looks at the health sector in this country, one notices that the modern health care system extends to less than 30% of the population, nearly 70% of whom depend upon Lok Swaasthya Praramparaas (LSP) for their health needs, At the structural level, the referral service system may be considered adequate, but at the primary health centre level the structure is weak and is monopolised by the allopathic system. This needs to be changed. There is excellent service being performed by practitioners of certain types of indigenous medicine, as, for example, in bone-setting or in respect of eye disorders. Such work, an outcome of living guru-sishya tradition, has been rated high in quality even by allopaths who are usually hostile to or at least skeptical of these practices.
One may discuss the manner in which the LSPs can be appropriately recognised for their practical worth. But we notice that the current trend is towards "integration" of traditional medical systems with allopathy. This kind of a proposal, much floated about presently, has certain serious weaknesses. The primary one is the way the allopaths or experts in Western medicine conceive of the effectiveness of a particular drug or treatment. This is usually effected through a statistical model and there are many such trials sponsored by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to test the effectiveness of indigenous medical systems. Such trials have often ended in failure, for they do not capture the variability in preparation between practitioners and so on. This aspect needs to be critically examined. The other is the need to encourage dialogue between practitioners of folk medicine and those of Ayurveda. Such efforts will take us a long way in securing the LSPs, their deserved position in health care in this country, machinery, aimed at intimidating the local population so that they will not cooperate with the activists.
The channels and sources of support for protest movements are being narrowed down considerably by governmental action. Foreign financing is available to gain popular support and availing this immediately channelises the protest movements in a particular direction. Often, the life-styless of activists are used as a vested interest to achieve such an end; this suits the purposes of the government also. We talked of the need for technological self-reliance, and there is need for caution on the protest front also; there is need to be self-reliant in protest.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala
The PPST effort was founded ten years back and I have been associated with it for a considerable length of time. In the last two years or so, there has been some questioning within PPST, a sense of dissatisfaction - we have done so much so far, what next. There may be various approaches to answering this question and I shall provide a personal view.
One of the principal concerns which motivated our effort was the lack of functionality in the modern sector of national life in India. This still remains a concern, and I notice it among my colleagues in the IIT system too. I shall talk only about the modern sector in India, because I’m reasonably familiar with it and have been in the IIT system which is a part of it.
The situation of the IITs today is an example of the kind of situation that the whole modern sector is placed in. At the time of Independence and into the fifties, there appears to have been a feeling that collaborations with foreign countries were necessary to promote industrial growth in this country. The IITs were founded in the notion that they would provide adequate training to create manpower, which would help overcome the need for collaborations. But even after three decades of IITs and four decades of independence, the collaboration tendency has not been checked and is flourishing, in fact. The IITs appear to have provided good training, but the utilisation of such training to promote technological self-reliance has not been taken up. It appears to me that these institutions are not perhaps capable of achieving such a goal of promoting training and research for technological self-reliance. This is so inspite of commanding huge resources. This to me is an example of the dysfunctionality of the modern sector in India.
S.Gadekar
We could start by looking at the energy situation in the country. Seshadri talked of the obsession that our planners have with producing electric power. This kind of skewed allocation of resources results in a situation which is like a war on the poor people in this country. With such attitudes, and with notions such as the necessity for building larger and larger thermal power plants, we are entering a phase where we tend to create a "Third World'' of our own. But the final aim is to bring in nuclear electricity at any cost. For example power generation is stated to be one of the important aims of the Narmada Sarovar Project. But it is clear to me that within few years, due to competing demands, less and less water will be available for power production and so that would become another plank to jutify the introduction of nuclear power.
On another plane, many of the present developments have tended to bring out clearly the relationship between energy and survival of the population. The lack or dwindling supply of biomass for fuel, the reduction in soil quality which prevents augmentation of biomass use etc., have pointed to the fragility of the energy support system in survival. In such situations, the lure of nuclear power might become more pronounced.
But developments over the last decade have revealed that there is a breakdown in the consensus on technological issues. Ten years back, there was a consensus, at least within the scientific community, about the need for nuclear power in India. Such a consensus cannot be said to exist anymore. Further, the people, the affected population, have become aware of what is being done to them. They no longer are taken in by Statements about the employment generating potential of a highly polluting technology. For example, near Kota (where the R.A.P.S. is located) reactor, there is a village where a disproportionately large number of children have physical deformities. And the residents of the village are aware that the local radiation could be the cause of this. They admit to this despite the DAE being their sole employer. The causal connections are visible, but there is also a sense of helplessness. Similar is the awareness and feeling towards technologies which tend to physically displace a very large mass of people, by taking away their land.
Perhaps sensing this, stronger laws are being formulated and used against dissent movements in the name of combating terrorism. For example, TADA. which was brought in on the pretext of containing terrorism in Punjab is increasingly put to use in Gujarat, against anti-nuclear activists. There are also terror campaigns by the state radical transformation or restructuring of such institutions may be proposed, but pending that I believe functionality must be demanded of them. We must demand from them responsibility to the aims of self-reliance in technology. Their present record in terms of providing useful designs or products to the manufacturing or industrial sector is not worthy of mention, and fulfilment of such a function must be demanded.The people who man such institutions now do not feel confident, and seem to feel helpless. Helpnesses coupled with command over huge resources may only result in callousness and that should not be allowed.
Raising this issue, I believe, will enable us to interact more meaningfully with the scientific-technological community. We in PPST have raised some major philosophical and conceptual questions on the nature of science and technology and its roots, in the Western civilisation. But we seem to be unable to proceed on the basis of raising these issues alone. True, today many more colleagues are prepared to listen to these issues than there were ten years back but that doesn’t take us much further. So, a different approach may be useful. The people who man this sector now aren’t totally dysfunctional; they can’t be dismissed, and an interaction with them is necessary. Rendering their work relevant in some way will be an important activity, and should be recognised as such in the PPST effort. Unwillingness to take this up seems to have given rise to the impression of the existence of non-complementary lines of thought within the PPST, and that needs to be changed.
Navjyoti Singh
A serious debate between indigenisation and the liberal import of technology is as old as the nation state in this country. What is new in the present context? Why could not, in the earlier period, Indian nationalism extend to technology policy as well? It is my belief that such a total lack of commitment to indigenisation as we see around us now, is a direct outcome of nationalism which could flourish without faith in its own people, which rests its faith solely in "executioners" (that is, those who execute what is abstractly legislated) We must understand this large issue of the very nature of the "executive wing" before we can formulate a proper division between indigenisation and liberal import of technology.
The modem nation-state is founded upon the separation between the judicial act and the legislative act. However, in our civilization, the conviction is that the act of justice (dharmanukula kriya) alone can be the source of legislation (vidhana) of norms, institutions, and fruitful activities. All norms of behaviour and work and institutions (such as the family, kinship, professions, community etc.,) are legislated through acts leading to dharma (justice). One of the most important features of this system is the power to administer punishment or correction (prayascitta) when a mistake is committed. Punishment itself is considered injurious to the person concerned if a prayascitta is available and can be performed. This function (of administering correction or punishment) is often assumed within a community or even family, leading to a system or state which is singular, universal in theory, but is decentralised in pactice.
The modern Indian state has moved away from this, by effecting transfer of sovereignty from the individual to the state, which then takes over the administration of punishment, through its judicial wing. The legislative act (on the basis of delegation of power from the individual to the state) gets separated from the judicial act. A state which is an embodiment of this may not be perceived popularly as establishing dharma through its legislative acts, but the ideology of nationalism provides the justification or legitimacy needed.
Let us note that in India, production was carried out in jurally adequate communities. The overall polity domesticated and socialised a production process by instituting a community (samaja dharana) around it. The community then takes up the entire responsibility for that profession and continually demonstrates that judicious living is possible around that profession. No production process would survive if a samaja could not be instituted around it, by the actions of the appropriate personage (apta purusha) who have become authorities (adhikari) on that production process.
In Independent India, S & T has been legislated through the elitist model of state that we had received and as such had to be totally dependent on a managerial culture, characteristic of the executive wing. The science managers, in the image of pettier executives of legislation, have acquired some sort of immunity from public accountability. This can be corrected if we evolve a method to gather practitioners of technology in a forum, to contitute a community. Such a community should continually review the situation in the country and abroad with respect to that technology at least. Such an activity will confer on them the vidhayaka sakti legislative power). This would be one way one can functionalise a community of technology practitioners. The emphasis here is that they should be made to feel capable of shouldering responsibility for that technology at least which they work on.
M.D.Srinivas
There are various visions in India of what science is or what constitutes scientific activity. There are conceptions which consider science to be something pure, ennobling, a pursuit of truth, something which gives us power over nature. Many such views are summed up in the attitude that "the scientist is a rishi", a phrase which was coined by an eminent Indian physicist.
The prevalence of such views, of science as a method of generating grand theories of the universe, leads to a critical view when evaluating the traditional sciences of India. For the past hundred years or so, we have been implicitly guided into such beliefs through the works of British scholars. Today, when a modern Indian historian of science assesses the achievements of Indian. sciences, he finds them lacking in progress. For example, a senior mathematician in this country, who has been looking at developments in Indian mathematics upto 16-17th centuries, says that we had made good progress in the early period - progress that is considerably ahead of mathematics in the 17th century in Europe- but then we do not seem to move at all. Instead of creating newer and newer grand theories, our scientists seem to be indulging in petty things, like improving a whole host of calculations, and so on.
I understand the situation in Indian sciences as follows : the primary thought here is that the theories are human constructs expressed in human language. Human language, even when embodying the thoughts of great personages, carries ambiguity in it, thus reducing the value of the exactness. This is more visible over a period of time. Since a theory is dependent on compatibility with perception, agama (the words of authorities) and inference, often a theory is refined when newer observations are noticed, This is the general tendency, and indian scientists are careful not. to tamper working theories with uncertain hypotheses, because they see the purpose of thier activity differently. It is not to construct only grand theories, but to aid activities in ordinary, practical life. So, far all appearances, Indian scientists seem to have worked more like the “normal scientists'' who are working away at microfine details.
Thus, scientists in India traditionally may not have been “rishis" but this is what, to some extent, the British sought to achieve by creating a class of exclusive people whose speciality would be their exposure to modern Western Science. About 100 years back,many Indians who had been exposed to modern science did feel a strong commitment to its propogation in India, along with whole variety of myths that the West had built around it. Many scientific institutions created in India under the British had "regeneration of India" as the principal objective. But this issue has not been examined - whether the model of theory system that would go on producing newer and newer theories of universe by the day, or one which would be concerned with the affairs of practical life. The faith in the former appears to have faded in the ‘seventies, so it does appear viable to think that science in India today would be more fruitful if it evolved into its role traditionally assigned to it.
The sense of and the need for exclusivism that the British inspired in us continues to make us blind to the emerging trends, whereby it is becoming visible that India is coming into its own. One of the most crucial activities in science could be not to obstruct this emergence, but to enable it happen. We as scholars who dabble in theories of the West, need to enthuse the public that this is so and that it would happen. Many issues connected with Indian Resurgence have been put forward in the last 10 years but sufficiently large efforts have not been made to face them. That is going to be an important task in the years to come.
Claude Alvares
I have been concerned with the violence that we see around us today, and the role of modern science in perpetrating or sustaining it. My observation of the modern farming technology, the pesticide application for example, convinces me that modern science embodies the mass murder approach - kill and clear everything that you consider undesirable. Modern allopathic medicine, particularly the antibiotic therapy, is another manifestation of this approach, by formulating the outright elimination of all flora and fauna from the body. The school in our society reinforces such an approach and contaminates the children’s minds with the need and correctness of using violence.
But science has gone deep into the psyche of our leaders and influences their vision of this society. Nehru was disgusted with Indian society, because he viewed it through science. So are many of our leaders today. There is this urge created by science to destroy nature and recreate as an order as we desire it - like "forests" are created from "jungles". The popularisation-of-science movements are only spreading this calamity, by denying the value of anything Indian.
Now , I am fascinated by the great sense of self-preservation and survival in this society which has kept it going under the onslaught of modern science. It has survived only in a deformed way, no doubt, but it has survived. Acquiring deformities is perhaps a way of hiding one’s survival. When one sees tribals and those untouched by the impact of modern science, one thinks that they do know the secret, but getting to know it from them is a closed avenue as far as we are concerned. So we will have to search for an answer on our own. I believe that the only solution would be to deprofessionalise oneself and live in complete harmony with nature, have unbridled interaction with nature. Personally this is what I have been doing. The PPST effort also has focussed attention on the destructive character of modern science, but in 10 years, time has come for PPST to take stock of their own contribution. Major changes are needed, may be through dramatic events or PPST may have to close down - this is my understanding.
Vasant Palshikar
I do notice that there is some sense of dissatisfaction within PPST about the endeavour, as, for example, it comes through in the talk of Ashok Jhunjhunwala. PPST has worked like a think tank so far, by offering to project ideas by which the people may benefit, while keeping distant from the people. It generally happens that many ideas generated in this way often do not enthuse people so as to make them seek guidance through such ideas. Then there is some dissatisfaction among those who generated these ideas, PPST appears to be in such a position.
I believe it would be useful at this juncture to take a cue from Mahatma Gandhi's method of organisation. When he was not activating, mobilising the masses of people towards a specific goal, he used the organisation to work amongst people, by carrying out constructive programmes, which had a wide range of activities related to welfare. PPST perhaps can evolve a constructive programme in a similar way. The capability of PPST as a group is wellknown, so it should make it easy to evolve constructive programmes. I could think of activities in the health sector (indigenous medical systems and their relevance), and farming (organic farming, permacultre etc) as possible areas where PPST could evolve constructive programmes. Adoption of a demonstrably different lifestyle may have to be an integral feature of the programme evolved.
Krishna Kumar
One of the principal concerns of mine is to rectify the lack of self-confidence that we see around us today. Often enough, we have felt distressed to find the conditions around us as they are, and have pointed to the lack of vision of those that wielded power. Many of us had and have the vision and the ideas. In the past 10 years, considerable amount of theoretical and analytical work has been done which has revealed the soundness of the ancient or traditional systems. It is time to develop practical methods by which some of these ideas or techniques could be rendered effective. There are a good many organisations in this country which are dedicated to identical purposes, but which perhaps lack the necessary vision. One effort could be that some of us join such organisatons to give them or direction we think we are confident of giving. Doing so, I believe, would be a reaffirmation of ur commitment. to these ideas.
I have personally been involved with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and with teaching of Ayurveda. I am with the former in the belief that organising the majority community is an essential step in the task of organisation of the national polity. In Ayurveda, I had noticed that inspite of a very sound system of medicine, the quality of students it attracted was inadequate. The result is a ten year effort in innovative reorganisation of ayurveda and I am happy to note that significant improvements have occurred through this. These results suggest that we need to get considerably more practical.
Asha Kachru
Women in India experience Western technology as a means for power politics, as a destructive tool. In the rural areas, the modernisation policies followed since the time of Nehru, and more recently under Rajiv Gandhi, have led to such large scale deprivation, that the poorer people have to live in inhuman conditions. At least in Northern India, the technology of Green Revolution has impoverished poorer people further; the menfolk in this situation have left the villages, leaving women as sole bread winners in many households . The overall orientation of Indian economy has been designed to suit the commercial interests from the West, and this has resulted in destruction of the socio-cultural context of tribal and rural populations, particularly of women. Investment in crores in the name of "development" in westernised institutions (such as banks) does not bring back the human dignity that has been lost.
A point of considerable significance here is the existence of voluntary organisations in India, which work towards evolving technology alternatives so that ecologically sound practices may return.
I believe that for a peaceful, ecologically and environmentally sound world, an ecological and political perspective of building technology with a feminine value-orientation is becoming absolutely necessary. Inclusion of such a perspective in existing technical institutions must be aimed at as an objective.
S.R.Ramaswamy
While on thethreshold of ‘90s, we notice that situation around us is chaotic; in mast vital areas, only the form has remained while functionality has disappeared. Our priorities in ordering socio-economic development are mixed up : we have a fertiliser industry which is subsidised to the extent of Rs.4000 crores while small and medium farmers, who subsist on their own without fertilisers, are not given any benefit. All this is compounded by the continuing aggressive industrialism-inspite of Bhopal - and the obsession with six_percent growth rate. The State in India, in such a context, is seen increasingly seeking alliance with transnational corporations and supra-national surrogate governments like the World Bank, or the IMF. On top of all these, we have aberrations in the name of export policies -for example, an agriculture export policy under consideration aims to triple the value of such exports (of cotton, oilseeds, sugar) irrespective of the capacity to meet domestic demands. Or, take our soft stand on the threat that the USA held out in the name of "super 301" - we were more or less ‘saved’ by the intervention of Pepsico Corporation on our behalf, but as a consequence, we have drawn up a “new industrial policy" aimed at providing fresh avenues of liberalisation.
This, in brief, is the challenge. Voluntarism may counter this, but not on a fixed agenda, far that would be a contradiction. The welfarist approach in voluntarism - of duplicating governmental delivery systems - might, for some, constitute anti-development. The reformist approach of the Nav-nirman of the ‘70s or. the Narmada-Tehri battles of the present, may have lost major battles but has scored significant small wins. But for these, the progress of anti-development could not have been arrested. Voluntarism has to continue to perform this function for a long time to come.
We must point to the need for introspection among voluntary workers. Many of the movements - such as the anti-Narmada, anti-Baliapal or anti-Kaiga - are viewed as local agitations rather than as symbolic movements against destructive development in general. The messages intended may be getting lost in harping on statistical detail or non-essential information. So, there is need to reflect on developing a total perspective. Without such a perspective, and lack of unified direction, the emergence of conceptual alternative is delayed and this failure may swallow up little successes.
The effort, therefore, should be to constantly enlage the vision underlying voluntarism. The drawbacks in the voluntary sector are mainly the following:
- Inadequacy in the understanding of the macrolevel ramifications of the present politico-economic trends.
- Diminished radicalism because of State oppression and because of institutionalised functioning of voluntary groups.
- Absence of structures for sustaining the spirit of idealism in voluntary workers.
We may have to reflect on these aspects to evolve fresh modes of voluntary work.
Tomy Mathew
The ’80s have demonstrated to us that the age of mega-movements is over; the intervention by mega or super-personalities as a cause or mode of political change is not conceivable. What we see now emerging is the politics of resistance, the resistance movements, which are local and have tocal-specific character. The politics of resistance is not all negative; it expresses and embodies the awareness that, contrary to beliefs held earlier, people don’t need specialists to save them, they need to be saved from the specialists; people don’t need technologies to save them, they need to be saved from them. Such awareness is also the result of the failure of the mega movements of the ‘60s and early ‘70s to deliver them from an oppressive, dehumanising order. In another sense, they also go beyond the mega movements, because they reflect the awareness of a structural crisis in the civilisation. There could be two types of responses when faced with such a crisis: one would be go down to the very root of the problem in order to settle it, while the other would be to plead inability because the crisis is strucural! The politics of resistance arises from the former kind of response. It is as if it arises in the kitchen, engulfs the home, and spreads into the locality. Thus even when the resistance movement remains local, it may express a very profound change. That, I believe, is going to be the trend of movements in the future.
J.K.Bajaj
When we got together some 10 years ago and started the PPST effort, we were perhaps more confident than we are now. It looked to us then that the problem of India was a relatively straight-forward one: the British conquered India, moved us away from our course; we had since been drifting. All that needed to happen was a change - swich off the influence created by the British, and we should be back on our course. What we do realise now is that the problem is not as simple. Many tendencies which we thought had been inspired by the British could have been part of us; they may not indeed be alien. Only that certain tendencies inherent may have been emphasised by the British and become dominant.
When one examines data on villages of Chengalpattu district around 1770, one notices how meticulously organised the economic and social life had been. There are many details, which are not only taken note of but actively attended to, such as care of travellers, animals, the sizes of living spaces, water storage and so on. What. one realises is that this was passible only because those who operated these, the local communities, were also the ones who built them.
This is precisely the antithesis of what is happning today: we, the elite, take on us responsibilities for doing things which are not really ours. For example, the people of India know how to produce enough grain to feed themselves, but we intervened and messed up things considerably. The net result of our intervention has been that a large number of people do remain hungry, while the government stocks pile up. One can consider many more such examples, which demonstrate the carelessness involved in running the affairs of the country. We could only say that when those who were only subservient take to wielding power, callousness would be the prevalent attitude. We have tended to take on more responsibility on us than we could handle, and the net result is neglect and callousness in the country’s daily life. We could only do tasks that are enabling - only those efforts which generate options so that the people may choose from them [Not Visible] is suitable.
Sunil Sahasrabudhey
(See his article "Swadeshniti” in this issue).
About the Speakers
Jhumur Lahiri is a materials scientist with a government laboratory at Hyderabad
S. Arunachalam is Editor, Indian Journal of Technology, New Delhi.
S.N. Nagarajan is a marxist thinker and writer based in Vellore.
C.V. Seshadri is Director, Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre, Madras.
Darshan Shankar is with the Academy of Development Science, Karjat, Maharashtra and
is a co-founder of the Lok Swaasthya Parampara Samvardhan Samiti (LSPSS).
S. Gadekar is Editor, Anu Mukti, which is a journal devoted to raising public awareness
on the nuclear issues.
Ashok Jhunjhunwala is with the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT, Madras and
is treasurer of the PPST Foundation.
Navjyoti Singh is with NISTADS, New Delhi
M.D. Srinivas is with the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Madras, and
is one of the founders of PPST.
Claude Alvares is a writer and author based in rural Goa.
Vasant Palshikar is associated with various environmental activist groups, is a writer on
social issues, and is based in Poona.
Krishna Kumar is Director, International Institute of Ayurveda, Coimbatore.
Asha Kachru is with the Frederick Eibert Foundation, New Delhi.
S.R. Ramaswamy is Editor, Utthana, A Kannada social monthly.
Tomy Mathew is with Pata Bhedam, a fortnightly from Thrissur, Kerala
J.K. Bajaj, one of the founders of PPST, is Director, Centre for Policy Studies, Madras.
Sunil Sahasrabudhey is with the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi.
