The Politics of Science

There was a lec-dem yesterday at the Centre for Drug Research Institute. CDRI is a premier government funded research institute for biomedical research located in Lucknow. CDRI is located in Chattar Manzil Palace, where the regal nawabs of Lucknow once lived the good life. It is a huge magnificent building. If Nehru called dams the “temples of modern India” then surely research institutes like CDRI would be the reigning deities of the nation; strech the analogy further and you could imagine scientists as the “priests of modern India.”
The striking irony: A product of scientific rationalism like CDRI located in a palace that was built for a pre-modern way of life.

The lec-dem was by a distnguished scientist from the National Physical Laboratory (another government lab) who had just returned from Antarctica. This gentleman is the coordinator of India’s Antarctica project and has visited the icy continent twice! The lec-dem was organised with a view to share his experiences about his journey. But the subtext was to also introduce the audience to the potential to exploit Antarctica’s resources. More on that later.
The scientist showed us pictures he took at the Indian station and narrated anecdotes about his visit. Also, interesting facts about the white continent. But, I felt that the underlying message of the talk was “This is a continent that is lying unexplored and unexploited. Something has to be done.”

He kept harping on the fact that there is no tourism to Antarctica from India. The fact that 10,000 tourists, mainly from S. Africa, Australia, N. Zealand, visit Antarctica made it all the more regrettable. The terms in which he framed it, it was like the nation was getting left behind in the scramble to ”exploit” Antarctica.
There was one moment during the slide show that was particularly revealing. There was a ’science cartoon’ of a penguin talking to a scientist (presumably an Indian) set against the icy, frigid landscape. The penguin says, “Looking at you I feel I have wasted my life here. No job, no money, no comforts. When you next go home to New Delhi take my son along with you so that he can become a scientist.”

There are several narratives that can be interpolated from this cartoon: science as the ultimate aim of society, looking at the things outside the realm of science as essentially “wasted”, scientific research or achievement as the desired goal, looking at a ”non-scientific” way of living, and all the imagined attributes that accompany it like ’sloth’, ‘carefree’, ‘easygoing’, as undesirable and a desire to correct this.

There was another revealing moment. Giving the reasons for harmony in the Indian station, as compared to other countries’ stations, he said that “the great women of the Indian nation hold together the family bonds for the progress of the nation.” Harmonious social relations and infact even the progress of the nation has been yoked to the women of the nation, like a cart is hitched to a bullock for its physical progress.

Science is supposed to be liberating; it was born in the crucible of enlightenment values and opposition to religious dogma. But has science now itself become a dogmatic religion which sees the world lying outside its realm with disdain, to be colonised, for the purpose of progress, progress of the nation?

Antarctica is the last wilderness on Earth, a land untouched by man or science. The icy, bleak landscape is threatening and exhilarating at the same time. Is this one reason that Science wants to colonise this continent? Why can’t penguins live their boring, unscientific lives? Why can’t the mountains and moss and seals live in peace? Why does progress of the nation depend on women performing a particular kind of role; that of holding the bonds of family togeher and civilizing the brute man?