How does science and innovation affect the city you live in and your society? Akhila Seetharaman speaks to the experts.
“In the 1960s, the United States was at a crossroads,” said Esha Shah, a science and technology studies expert at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. “Planners had to decide between building an extensive rail network or an elaborate system of highways.” They chose highways – a decision that not only profoundly influenced the American way of life but also locked them into a perpetual dependency on carbon-based fuels. “Overhauling the system and creating of public transport by rail to replace highways in the United States will be costly and perhaps unrealistic even over the next 100 years,” Shah prophesied.
This fortnight, Shah is organising a series of public discussions around the idea that technology and science influence the way we live. Scheduled to take place in Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, the Knowledge Society Debates – an initiative of the STEPS Centre at the University of Sussex – bring together European and Indian visions of the future of public life as shaped by science, technology and innovation. “Delhi, being the seat of power, is where many important decisions take place. So the theme of the talks here is democratising knowledge futures,” Shah told us. “Democratising knowledge future is an overarching theme, which affects our daily lives and how we live – not just in the present, but also in the future.”
Shah believes that becoming a “knowledge society” entails making sure that, while we adopt one kind of innovation, we don’t foreclose other options. “For example, adopting nuclear energy would mean investing huge amounts of human and financial resources in creating manpower, setting up reactors and distribution systems,” she said. “Investing in nuclear energy would implicitly mean that committing similar financial and human resources to other energy options would considerably dwindle. Nuclear energy must be examined in comparison with many other energy options. In order to do so, we must have multiple energy options alive and viable by equally investing in all of them.”
While the Indian public still trusts the inherent goodness of science and technology, the scenario in Europe is markedly different, said Shah. According to a European Commission report titled Taking European Knowledge Society Seriously, technological interventions over the past 50 years have led to risks and uncertainties that have made people wary of science. “There is an increasing anxiety about industrialisation and food production. Europe is moving towards a future with fewer cars, less waste, less technological intervention in food and less mechanisation. America, on the other hand, is moving in the opposite direction,” said Shah.
Also speaking at the talk is Shiv Visvanathan, professor of sociology of science and technology at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar. He told us that countries like India and China have a lot to contribute to the debates. “Each has a different style of science and innovation influenced by the extent of democracy and the role of tradition, among other factors,” Visvanathan said.
As the direction of science and technology enters the purview of political discussion and decision-making, there is also a need for greater public engagement with science. “The Right to Information has to go deeper and apply to debates that usually take place only in science journals. Science and technology concern everybody,” he said. “We need to ask questions like ‘What is the ethical basis of looking at these things?’, ‘How does the ordinary person deal with this?’ ‘What is the nature of accountability?’”
India already has a National Knowledge Commission to focus on issues like knowledge access, creation, application and delivery of services. But, as Shah pointed out, “It’s about engaging with the National Knowledge Commission. It’s not just about creating higher educational institutions, but also focusing on what kind of education we are imparting, what kind of society and what kind of future we want.”
Issues of knowledge, according to Shah, are never innocent; there is a question of power, very closely connected with them. Join Shah and other panellists at the public debate in the capital this fortnight, so you can raise questions on knowledge and innovation and have your say in the issues that impact the overall development of our country. With inputs from Radhika Arora
Illustration by: Asinha
Source : Time Out Delhi ISSUE 11 Friday, August 20, 2010
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