 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. An international march for science is going to be held in countries across the world on the 14th of April for people to come out and speak out against the rising attacks on scientific and rational thought. To discuss this march, its need and what are the, what is the Indian context? We have with us today D. Raghu Nandan who is with the Delhi Science Forum as well as the All India People Science Network. So Raghu firstly, this march is being held in countries across the world and each country has its own specific context, its own specific needs. Why is this march important in India? Two things I think come to the fore. The first is internationally this call had first gone out last year and it received very good response all over the world against the background of the new Trump administration in the US which launched a frontal attack on science particularly on climate science calling climate change a fraud. The Trump administration also removed even the term climate change from its official websites, cut funding to the National Science Academy, to the Environment Protection Agency and in fact launched a wholesale attack on science itself. The protests against that found an echo across the world where funding for scientific research had been slashed in favor of corporate based activities and asking scientific institutions to raise their own fund, funding for universities had gone down and so on. In India however, we are facing an additional problem. Here also funding for scientific research is exceedingly low. It is roughly around under 1% of GDP compared to over 3% in most countries and in particular countries who are aspiring to rise up in the group of nations as developed states, you cannot do that without investments in science and technology. So we are facing cuts in science alright, cuts in research funding but additionally something that's happening in India is an assault on reason, an assault on critical thinking which is the foundation not only of science and of research but also of scientific attitudes in the general public and that is what adds a special dimension to the call to march for science in this country. So we are seeing this development, this atmosphere of anti-science, anti-rational being developed in India and of course it affects people who are in scientific institutions or doing scientific research or employed in scientific disciplines but it also affects people in general. How do these effects then transcend to regular citizens? Let's look at both these aspects. It affects research, scientific research directly as well as indirectly. Directly we have seen efforts in this country of directing research, telling scholars what to research and how to research. So this government seems inclined to pre-select problems without appreciating what is the science behind it. Even the Niti Ayog has come out with a set of research problems to be studied which are really mundane issues not qualifying for front rank scientific research. So this changes or affects scholarship at large and prevents scientific research from being what it can or should be and this is by the way even worse in the social sciences where the government is actually pre-selecting issues linked with ongoing governmental programs basically then commissioning researchers which will justify or support governmental programs saying how great they are and so this prevents researchers from applying their mind from doing critical studies, from looking at a problem and discovering what is happening and forces students or researchers to look for predetermined answers and this is what translates in the general public. The general public also are being told you don't need to think for yourselves. We will give you we meaning the ruling dispensation, its allies across textbooks are being rewritten, fantastic stories are being put out about the great traditions of Indian scientific knowledge claiming all kinds of absurd things in the name of Indian science whereas if you are a votary of how great contributions have emanated from India there are a large number of genuinely great scientific discoveries made in India in a variety of fields which ancient Indian scholars have shared with the rest of the world and also where ancient Indian scholars have borrowed the best from other parts of the world into Indian thought and the practice of science which is how science has grown internationally whereas there is a artificial attempt to talk about an Indian science in fact a Hindu science. It's more focused on mythology now. That's right so an effort to substitute mythology for science and effort to substitute fiction for fact. This will inculcate it is that's what the ruling sections hope will inculcate in people a mindset where they don't think on their own. They only respond through received wisdom and if you don't think on the danger of courses that if you don't think on your own you are going by received wisdom then you are ready to swallow all kinds of contemporary mythologies which are being put out whether they are regarding positions of different communities in society, roles of different communities, roles of government etc. to foist uniform thinking rather than independent diverse thought. In this year's March for Science in India and particularly in Delhi the demands are not just restricted to scientific research funding for scientific research or just scientific thought they also include demands for focus more government focus on education increasing spending on education also the demand for the taking legal action against the murders of rationalists the four very high profile murders that have taken place in the last couple of years. So how are these demands linked to each other and how are these demands linked to this March for Science? As I was saying you are having a problem of research in scientific institutions you are having a problem of research being conducted in universities of how science is taught in schools and of how science is sought to be suppressed critical thinking is sought to be suppressed in the wider public all these as we have discussed are interlinked and an additional danger is the point that you referred to which is a climate of aggression and violence has also been whipped up in India those who express critical ideas those who criticize these mythologies or received wisdoms who propagate rationality and scientific thought are actually being attacked and we have seen these high profile murders of Kalburgi of Davulkar of Gauri Lankesh this is symptomatic of the wider malaise that we are talking about in India institutions of research higher education institutions and universities independent thought and critical thought are sought to be suppressed here debates and discussions are being discouraged followers of the ruling dispensation who don't have academic merit are being foisted as heads of these institutions universities such as JNU Hyderabad and many others the IITs at Madras and Bombay have come under attack simply for discussions that are held on campus which actually is the function of universities not just teaching of curricula and so on but to inculcate independent and critical thinking and the same filters through to society at large if you are not encouraging these in universities in institutions of higher learning or research if you are rewriting textbooks again to put false ideas and to prevent independent thinking and you are propagating unscientific thought and mythologies at a mass level then you are suppressing scientific thought as a whole which is not good for human development and in very practical terms if this government is talking of leading this country to becoming a developed country in this knowledge era this cannot be done without science it cannot be done on the basis of received wisdom it cannot be done through rote learning it has to be done by encouraging critical thought and investing more in science and research. So finally Ragu now we have this March coming up on 14th of April countries from all over the world Delhi and various cities in India are going to be participating why is it important for people to come and participate what can this March achieve at the end of the day. It's important for people to participate because this struggle is being fought at different levels and at different fora from schools to colleges to universities to research institutions and the country as a whole all of us are being affected by this and the future of our country and of our people is going to be affected by the direction that we take in the years to come as we have already been discussing. What we can achieve well let me put it like this it's not as if one March is going to change the way this government goes or any government goes for that matter this government and its followers in different myriad organizations have a committed approach to undermining science in so many different ways so it's not as if one March is going to change this but the people have to be mobilized to put pressure to try and convey a strong message that this is not the direction the people of this country want either in society at large or in education in higher education or in research and that if development is really our goal then development ranges from reaching an advanced level of societal advancement through research and investment in science and technology to development of the human spirit and the development of rational thought and action in our wider society if we don't achieve that all of us are going to suffer our future is going to suffer and that's what this March is trying to mobilize people across different walks of life in order to galvanize people to bring about the changes that we seek. Thank you Raghu for talking to us about this March. Thank you for watching this clip.