INTERVIEW l T V VENKATESWARAN l SCIENCE
India has very less scientists as compared to IAS officers etc. Why you think that is?
It’s not about how many IAS officer you can compare with or how many scientists you have. A real comparison would be like, in a population of a million, how many are scientists? And more importantly, how many are scientists in comparison to other countries? I mean, if you look at India today, the range that we are in, the per million scientists that we have are very close to, for example, Pakistan, or South Africa. Even China is having about five to ten times more scientists than us. In fact, we have about 100 scientists per million, and they have close to about a 1000. If you take countries like Sweden, they have about 6000 scientists per million. So, you can see the range, we are in a really poor situation in terms of number of scientists per million. And that has a very important impact on the way we can imagine our economy to be. For example, if you want your economy to be modern and scientific, something like nanotechnology or biotechnology based, then the number of scientists per million necessarily has to increase. Also, our funding for science is less than 1% of our GDP. It was actually close to about 0.8% in the past but now it has come down token less. And because of this factor too, if young people don’t see a bright future in science, bright students will move away to other fields. So, it’s all interconnected.
Students are pushed into science streams, but because those streams are more rote based, and not learning based, a lot of students choose to shift their view to other career paths. But you’ve always maintained that science is a creative process. It’s a non-conventional view, different to what we’ve been taught. Could you elaborate on that please?
Okay, every day you wake up, and observe your surroundings. Assuming that you wake up before sunrise, you would find the sun rising in the east. And you know that from your own experience. You may not necessarily name the direction as East, but you know very easily, from your own observations that sun rises from only one part of the sky. And it is sets exactly in the opposite part of the sky. We may name the directions as East West etc. but that’s not science. Science is observing but good science to go one step further and say that no, the sun is not rising, the Earth is revolving around itself, and hence you get an appearance of the sun rising from one part of the sky and setting in the opposite. So, here, without some bit of creativity or extra thinking beyond your experience, you would not be able to get this idea. Thus, science is also not being constrained by your experiences. So, you, you go beyond your experience and reach conclusions. But of course, whatever that you are imagining, whatever that you are shaping, whatever that you are making as a model, has to match with your observations. It cannot contradict your observation. It has to fit in with your experience, but you are also not a prisoner of your experience. That’s where science comes in. It takes you beyond personal experiences. So, this is a creative process. For example, any painter doesn’t just paint something that is out there. They are adding something to it, or subtract something from it. Like that, through science, you are creatively communicating about something, more than its mere appearance. Thus, science is also a very creative process, like painting, dancing, writing etc.
That’s such a brilliant analogy, that science breaks barriers and promotes out of the box thinking. Did you always want to be a part of this field?
I need to give a bit of a personal story for this. Most people even today, I’m sure, would have known scientists only as some drawings in school textbooks etc. With the arrival of television, perhaps you have access to real working scientists, or there’s less of a distance. But otherwise, you don’t really see them around. And particularly when the number of scientists per million is so low, the chances that you will is really low. Of course, if you include within the scientific personnel, people who are in medical profession, or people who are in agricultural etc, there is a chance that you will meet one or more of them in your life. But meeting those who are actually producing new knowledge, or innovating, is not very easy. So, it is not a very easy thing for most people to even have that kind of ambition because they don’t even know such a thing exists. My interest in science came basically because of my interest to know things. And only after I started reading about them that it entered my mind that one can become a scientist. I did not have such an idea when I was young, my views were completely different. What I thought I would become was completely different. It was only after being exposed to the knowledge that one can become a scientist did it become my ambition. And now I really enjoy it.
Most people don’t even think of pursuing a field because they have no idea about it. I feel there’s also a gender issue in this case. Like, we’ve created gender roles, for example, women need to be doctors and men engineers. The disparity is becoming more common, and I was reading up on Vigyan Prasar website, when I came across something called gender and technology communication. Could you explain what that is?
Gender in Indian society works differently. For example, if you go to the US, a lot of people will say that women are not encouraged to study computer science, but you come to India and in engineering colleges, computer science will have quite a lot of women participating whereas you might not find them in mechanical engineering or aeronautical engineering courses. So, every society has its own differentiation about gender, and not just that, but also caste and other forms of exclusion. They have an important impact on the opportunities which are available to individuals belonging to different communities, different caste groups or from the different socio-economic background, and provide huge limitations about, for example, expenses etc. There is a study which says that quite a lot of rural colleges do not even have science courses. So, if you’re from a remote district, the chance that you might even want to join a science course is very remote because it’s not there. So, these are all some kind of structural and cultural limitations; both come into play. In Vigyan Prasar, we work in two ways; one, we want to break this kind of glass ceiling, whether it is gender or whether it is other kinds of exclusion, example people with disabilities, people with special needs, and all kinds of glass ceilings. We need to break them through our communication, and talk about how people from different backgrounds with a different set of personal lifestyles, have contributed importantly to science. Two: today increasingly, you find in many rural parts, that there is an upsurge in women farmers, I mean, because of lack of remuneration, and in many places, the males migrate, go to other places for daily wage because agriculture is not productive enough. So, the women actually come and work in the field. But all the gadgets which are produced are produced with the assumption that it will be handled by a male. By and large, there is a differentiation between men and women, whether it is natural or otherwise, that’s a separate issue, practically there is a difference between the physical stature of men and women today in India, maybe because women are not given adequate food, nutrition, etc. So, usually, women are small in size. The bodyweight is slayers no various such things come into play and a small and all these things. So, you need the tools which can be actually operated by women. So, this then gender and technology looks at that kind of issues and sees that where you need to develop technology, shape it in such a way that it can be used by women is one of the important challenges, for example, they have taken it up. So, we partnered with other insurance and then we become a kind of generator of this kind of demand. And through which we are making other institutions also play the part, bringing people so that actual people can also play a part in shaping this technology.
I’d read that you said that science democratises people, and scientists actually bring people together. Could you elaborate?
Okay, there are two ways one should look at when one talks about science and its role in democratisation, or secularisation. One is the kind of worldview that science provides to us. The second is tools, and opportunities. So, when we look at the world views, which are produced by science, first thing that we know is that e=mc^2. It doesn’t matter whether you are from a particular sex, or what your place of birth is, or whatever belief or non-belief that you hold. It’s common for all, whereas other kinds of beliefs, one may accept one may not accept, depending on your cultural, political, religious ideologies. You may differ, but e=mc^2 remains the same if you are a rational person. It’s very common stuff, and not just for this world. Imagine, there is a planet. And imagine there is an intelligent life on it. That intelligent life may not have our physical form, but even for them e is equal to MC squared; they may use some other word for you, they may use some other word for him, they may use some other word for C, but the meaning is going to be safe, right. So, in a Euclidean geometry, if I draw a triangle, and if I add the angles inside angle is going to be 180 whether you are on Earth, or whether you on that board, whether you are in America, whether you are in India, right. So, in essence, it talks about the real world outside, which is universal for all of us. Okay, so the world is actually universal, only we are creating differences. Okay, so that’s, that’s one second, for example, human genome, the Human Genome Project. And many of such studies have very, very clearly shown that all of us are non-resident Africans. I mean, if I say, my mother, my mother’s mother, my mother’s mother’s mother, I mean, if I keep on saying like this, at some point of time, and you keep on saying like that, some point of time both of them are going to meet. And for example, for you all, you know that it’s good to meet for everybody in the world, somewhere around two lakh years ago with one women income combo. So, we are all actually progeny of that one single woman who lived about two lakh years ago in Congo, it doesn’t mean that there was only one woman. Only that women’s progeny continues to live today. Others were not able to produce kids or the kids did not live up to the age of producing their kids. So that lineage stops, it doesn’t mean that there was only one woman. Many people make that mistake. That’s not true. Okay. So basically, we can trace our roots to one woman who lived around two lakh years ago in Congo. So, we are all Africans. So, what is all this differences that we are talking about? There are only sufficient it’s all only something that we create. Okay, like 110. Talk about the people with longer we will get short as well. That’s only skin deep, right. So, the differences are skinny. We have desires which are very deep. That’s a different issue. But yes, we are all human beings. So, essentially, we all demand same rights that we are entitled to same kind of entitlements right. So, these powerful messages one can draw from science. So, that is one with regard to worldview. The second when we talk about or tools think of hundred years ago when a similar pandemic was raging in this world called the Spanish Flu okay. In India alone, that death was 1.8 crore out of 30 crore population. Okay, 1.8 crore out of 30 grow population, which was there about 100 years ago in India, of course, today we have 120 crore population, so, our population has multiplied by four times, okay. Even with that low population, they are 1.8 crore death. Today, under no stretch of imagination, that’s going to happen.
Yeah, that is a huge amount of debt. And all those debts are very saddening, we could do more to reduce this death. Everything is true. But it’s not there. Why? Basically, because we know better about the viruses about how they transferred, how to control them. And we are we are in the verge of finding out a good vaccine, or a set of vaccines. With that, perhaps we may completely eliminate this virus from the face of the earth. Like we have eliminated, for example, smallpox, which was killing huge number of people even about 5060 years ago. Right? So, the science also provides you a better world. I mean, it also tells you that world may not be like this world can be different. oil can be better. So, it also gives you hope. So, in both ways, science plays a very important role in democratization, right?
What do you think has been your greatest achievement? And what more do you still hope to achieve sir?
I think it’s too early to talk about achievements, perhaps only in your deathbed should you talk about them. But something that I feel very happy about in the recent past is one initiative that we tried in Vigyan Prasar, which was to talk about science happening in India. People talk about science happening internationally. And everyone thinks that science means only data. But there are lots of interesting things happening in India, and very little people are actually talking about it. So how do we read up about it and find what’s happening in Indian science, in Indian institutions, and also write it in a way that ordinary people will understand. This has been one major area of interest that I have spent the last five or six years on. So, this initiative is, in my opinion, doing fairly well. Of course, others have to say whether it’s good or bad. But my personal estimation is it’s doing well. It’s an initiative that we have launched with Rajya Sabha Television, and it’s called Eureka, Eureka conversation with Indian scientists. It’s a show that comes on every Saturday evening at 4:30. For half an hour, we interact with one Indian scientist about what they are doing, why they are doing, what are the interesting findings etc in a very popular way. Next, we have also started a kind of a program called India science via India science wire. So, in the senior science, where we are writing about research happening in Indian labs, some of the interesting things that are happening in Indian labs both are, in my opinion, something that I feel nice about. Something that we started as an experiment, and I’m finding it reasonably well received.
And is a great initiative, bringing science to the masses and trying to teach people in layman’s terms about science and scientists. But because science is increasing at such a fast pace, it can also be detrimental to humans. And it can also have disadvantages. In such a case, how do we combat them?
If I have to say this in a very simplistic fashion, science does not make your life better. Nor does science make your life bad. It is the application of science that makes your life better or worse. In essence, material betterment and material detriment. I’m not talking about intellectual changes, that’s different. Your question is essentially about things like longevity, freedom from diseases etc. That’s material progress. If a society decides to use science in their best way, then it will help people progress. You can reduce mortality. You can increase longevity; you can reduce pain. You can increase the living condition of people but if the society decides not to use it for everybody’s benefit, and only for some small number of people to benefit, then, of course, that society will create imbalances because of which certain people will be affected. So, this is not directly in relation to science, but who uses the it and how. So, that’s also an important reason for why science should be democratised and for people from multiple backgrounds to come into science.
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