 Hello, welcome to NewsClick and People's Dispatch. It's a real treat today because I'm with Prabir Prakash, not only the editor-in-chief of NewsClick but of course the founder of NewsClick and somebody that I will remember being interviewed by from 2009 onwards. So it's a treat here Prabir to turn the tables on you and get the chance to grill you. So welcome to NewsClick and People's Dispatch. Well you know Vijay, I still remember the times that we used to sit in that little basement of ours and I was just recounting to a friend of mine that Ajaz was also used to be there and how once you had interviewed Ajaz over there, remember? We really do go back a long way and of course you were one of my key guests always for national issues. What fun we had in that little apartment, basement apartment. Well, Prabir comes to us now with a book which I think is a landmark work on science, on technology, on the question of knowledge in general. The book is called Knowledge as Commons Towards Inclusive Science and Technology just out from Leftward Books. If I may say so, it's not only a very quick and informative read, but it reads a lot like things that Prabir has been thinking about for the bulk of his professional and intellectual life. It's almost like a summary of a great deal of thought. Prabir, I wanted to start by asking you a little bit about the two key terms in the title Science and Technology. At the front of the book, you make a very important point that, well, technology is sometimes set aside and science is given priority. That might have to do with the class system of knowledge. You believe, in fact, that these are not such distinct arenas. They are different, but they're not so distinct. In fact, you say at one point, could there be a third word that encapsulates the two? Could you talk a little bit about science, technology and perhaps this third word that encapsulates the two? Well, one starting point of both science and technology is that it is after a sphere of knowledge that both come from. One produces theories. The other produces artifacts which we use. Artifacts may be even today in terms of software. They're not necessarily physically tangible artifacts, but nevertheless, software is also an artifact. So there are different kinds of knowledge. And to think that one is knowledge, other is somehow applied is the fundamental distinction that I wanted to make that technology is not just application of knowledge, but it's a different kind of knowledge just as science also uses instruments, but it is not the product of the instruments alone. It's a product of the knowledge that you create through the instruments, therefore the link, of course, but also the fact that they are separate kinds of activities. And therefore that knowledge can be both technological, can be scientific, can be theoretical, can be practical, but all of it is dinging on the purpose that you have for the knowledge. Do you build theories to understand nature or do you build artifacts to change nature? And I think that's a very fundamental point. In fact, Gosambi talks about it and that's the inscription I think I've used in the book as well, that this I think is very fundamental. To me, the reason that we have privileged knowledge, scientific knowledge, theoretical knowledge as people would like to say over the application, the applied science that they used to term it as, which is where my discomfort really lies from, is the fact that we privilege, as you have said, the head over the head. And we forget that what makes us human is the fact that when we stand up, we have the opposable thumb and we have the ability to make tools, as the anthropologists would say, human beings are tool-making animals, and that's what distinguishes from others. It's not the head, but it is really the hands. And I think that was a very, very, shall we say, important point in my life because I realized that I actually wanted to be an engineer and I wasn't a scientist and it's a different profession that I was in. And that has taken a long time to work out these views, as you said. It's really a lifetime exercise of doing things, looking at all of this. And then at various points of time putting it down, in fact, one of the essays is really originally written about 35 years back. And when I read it again, I see, okay, I was on the right track even then, trying to distinguish between the same. But I, of course, have much more experience, as you said, of a practicing engineer looking at all of this. And therefore, the book really tries to flesh out this journey. You know, the book bristles with examples. You have a range of examples that are important for the reader who may not really have an understanding of the history of science and technology. You know, it's one thing to pick up an iPhone and fiddle about with it. It's another to know about how or where we got to this point of being able to have powerful computer at our, you know, in those caught between the opposable thumb and the rest of our fingers. Seems like often we're trapped, right, probed with this device in our hands, little understanding of its history. I mean, your text, your book, Knowledge is Commons, is so erudite. It's filled with examples, giving people a crash course in the history of science and technology. On the other hand, the term science and the term technology have this tendency to be seen as, let's say, trans-historical, as if science from the beginning of time, you know, when humans stood up to borrow from you, when humans stood up, there was science and there's science now. When humans stood up, there's technology, the use of tools maybe, and there's the use of tools now. However, science and technology are not trans-historical, they are rooted in the systems of production that we have, they're rooted. In fact, as you go on at length in a society in which they are developed, can you talk a little bit about science and technology rooted in time, rooted in space, rooted in the, say, the forms of production in which people live? You know, well, the answer would actually need the reading of the book and a couple of more books that you probably also have to write, so I'm not going to give an easy answer to this question. But, you know, if I look at how ancient societies, for example, and I've been talking about ancient societies, we're really talking about homo sapiens emerging and what distinguishes them from others. And then trying to reflect, is it something which is just prehistoric, just an incidental issue, or is it something still continues today between knowing and the artifact? And this is the exercise that I have tried to do. And then when we look at also the other absence that is there, you see, historians have written about history, so we know the historical systems that existed, we know about economic systems that existed. Scientists actually do write about the nature of their discipline. And in fact, at one point of time, they wrote more because they had a formal discipline in the discipline itself, they also had to study philosophy, how to locate science in the largest system of knowledge. Technologies, unfortunately, lack that. In fact, unless you take the French systems of the polytechnics, which really did combine to have combined doing with thinking. But if you take the British systems, which we unfortunately inherited much more, their technology was not even recognized as something the gentlemen should do. In fact, it was, they were not allowed into clubs, for example, you know, they're clubbed with trades people. In fact, that's one of the reasons that engineers and technologies after the 50s and 60s don't grow in UK. In fact, they then if you want to go up in life, you don't come from the landed aristocracy, you don't come from Oxford and Cambridge, then what you do is you do finance and law, but you don't do engineering, which is not true for many other countries. And of course, we in India, as you know, inherit the caste system. So the hand is always something to be looked down upon. So the sociology of the technologists and the sociology of scientists are relatively different in terms of how they perceive themselves. And unfortunately, the problem that I think most technologists have that we write boring things called specifications and reports. But we don't write about the nature of our discipline, unlike the scientific community, which actually does at least a set of them do. So this is one big gap that we don't really think about the nature of what we do. And to some extent, this still persists today. So you've got a lot of misconceptions, two sets of misconceptions I will take up. One is that it is an adjusted applied science. In the theory, you apply it, you get artifacts, and it doesn't work. Because unless you know what you want to make, the what theory I use is not, it doesn't come naturally. Just because of a theory, the artifact does not derive from it. The artifact generally derives from a specific social need. And that is the fundamental difference that we have, that social need is embedded in any artifact that you want to do. That is its function. Now, what I also have thought about and that's what I've written, that quite often science is not the principle that we use to achieve that. It's quite often a constraint. What I can't do tells me what is it that can't be done. It sets limits. But what I do depends on what exactly the social need is, or the physical need is. So this is a reflection, shall I say, of an engineer about the nature of his discipline. And I'm sure a lot of engineers who ask them will say the same thing, technologists will say the same thing. But as I said, unfortunately they'll say it, but they won't write it, or very few people have. So this is one of the problems that is there, why we tend to get subsumed. And now there is this talk about techno science and that everything is merged together. The point is, when you say, put a telescope, which you have done today, the most powerful telescopes that is circling the earth, looking at the really farthest reaches of space, it's a technological marvel. It really is. When you talk about, say, the chip manufacturing machine, it's a technological marvel. But there is an objective to it, that this is what you want. It's still an artifact. It's still very much like this. The origin lies here. So when you talk about these things, the objective is what is important in technology. And of course, that is conditioned by society. It is conditioned by who gives you the money, who controls the product, who controls the production. And of course, it's deeply embedded in the class relations. And I think that is one part of it of the book. The second part of the book is that science and technology quite often is seen as if science advances and therefore technology also advances. And I've said, take the major advances that we obviously can think of the telescope. The telescope came from grinding of lines and lenses. And that was a really artisanal work. There were no telescopes, Galileo could buy. Nobody manufacturing them. He had to do it himself. So a lot of this, for instance, in England, hook. He was a great technologist, cum scientist, because scientists did not have somebody making these instruments for them at that stage. So all of this, when you look at, then you realize that it still continues today. In fact, one of the biggest surprises I had when I was reading about, at that time, my passion, quantum mechanics, the quantum world, really. One of the things I discovered, a paragraph in some book, which said, you know, the main reason that we got looked at radioactivity and all these issues, because first time the engineers, technologists, could make a decent vacuum pump. And why did you make the vacuum pump? Because of the lamps, the incandescent lamps, which were then being made by Swann in England and Edison in the US, which needed vacuum. And that suddenly lays where the whole subatomic particles regime from Marie Curie to all the, you know, bequire, all the other people, Gronch and all of that. So it was really vacuum pumps, something which is very small, apparently in technology terms, becomes a major break in science. And similarly, we can find enough reverse examples as well. And as I said, the social framing of all of this, privileging knowledge of science, nature over the artisanal work of the hand, these, all of this, these things are things that I wanted to explore in this book. And finally, who owns all of this, who owns the knowledge. And that is fundamentally, then deals with who holds power in society and who does it. And I think that's something that is very important. For me, the other issue, of course, has been the class system. I have been on the factory floor. And unfortunately, if you don't know English, you can't read the drawings in India. And if you can't read the drawings, then you are supposed to be a unskilled worker. So automatically, the caste system very much replicates itself even on the factory floor. But those who do not have English education, even up to say class eight or something, they are not, they cannot be skilled workers because they cannot read instructions, they cannot read drawings. And therefore, they are only going to be unskilled workers. Well, they are the ones who have for centuries have had the manual skills, who know how to do things with their hands, but they are not the ones who are important. So all of this societal issues as well, it's so much a part of the life that I've lived in, from the factory floor to what I did in practice. So I think I thought that it is important that I put it down, because this is something which is, apart from my politics, which of course is very much there, apart from politics, these are also things that need to be brought in. And I end up with, of course, knowledge as common as the overriding political philosophy that we have to fight for, because otherwise it is enclosures of knowledge and creating monopolies because of this enclosures that we need to fight today. Coming back to who builds things, who built the Vikram Lander, who built the rocket that India has now sent up to study the sun. Chandrayaan III, quite an interesting development. One of the most stimulating essays in the book, Knowledge as Commons, is on the role of the left in science in India. I found that fascinating. I didn't know really any of that history. Could you reflect a little bit based on the understanding you have of the role of the left in the history of Indian science and technology with these quite amazing, almost startling things that seem to be happening at such, I don't want to say low prices, but it is extraordinary what the Indian space research organization is able to do with the kind of resources that it has, both with Chandrayaan III and now this rocket to the sun. Long arc of history as you what you say. One part of it is to look at that if you do not indigenize technology, in this case really technology, then of course the costs are very high and because India faced sanctions, as you know, space and atomic energy were the two which were sanctioned from the beginning and therefore it was something we had to develop by ourselves. Initially we had little bit of help here and there for a long time none and of course then we did get help from the Soviet Union at one point of time and then Russia as well. So those things are very much there, which goes into making of this, but we were forced to do all of it ourselves, both in nuclear as well as the space sector because of the US sanctions and what becomes, as you know, there are the regime which was introduced for controlling technology flows and if you were not with the United States and the Western powers, then you were frozen out of this, particularly if you wanted to make either nuclear reactors or you wanted to do even what would be called nuclear fuel separation or you did rockets because those were supposed to be the preserved, the technology was to be preserved of the West. Now in that this is I think called the COCOM regime which was there for controlling technology. This is something which was a huge difficulty for us when the for the Cochran blast in 1974 when we get into the sanctions that the Western countries impose on us and then we did have to do a whole range of things all by ourselves and that is where there is this completely unwritten history of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, the BRC, which pioneered a lot of these technologies which have then flown into the industry in different ways either through people or otherwise. Most important of the ones that I of course was loosely associated not with the nuclear energy program but with the ECIL which was the one manufacturing a lot of the stuff is that ECIL was set up primarily by Atomic Energy Commission because they realized they need instruments and control systems for the nuclear reactor and for which they could now not get access to Western technology. Soviet is also very reluctant to give technology but they are little more forthcoming than what the the Western powers are doing but we wanted to indigenize this. We also indigenized a lot of the metallurgy, special materials all of that came out of the BRC and that flowed to the industry. I do remember that one of my friends was involved with what would be called stainless tube welding which was required for the heavy water project which I have also touched in in my book and that again was something we had to develop indigenously because Montreal Engineering had pulled out because the candle reactors is what we were building and with those heavy water plants required heat exchanges of stainless steel material so all that history is forgotten. Now the question is who were the ones who set these things up and there the ish for instance you take a Baba now people don't realize Baba in the student days was very much a part of the student movement in England and he was in fact we checked up I checked up he did attend the founding of the World Scientific Workers Association he was the two people who attended was one is Baba but is Meghnath Sahab okay then once he joined the atomic energy stuff I think he kept out of all politics and then really did not go further on that but he as a student activist seemed to have been a part of the what would be called the World Student Federation and so on so this is anecdotal information that I have on this as well but I'm not getting into that but Sahab for instance was public he was very close to the left he stood on the Communist Party ticket in Bengal as an independent he I did he was one of the people who talked about central lines was a part of pushing both Subhash Chandra Bose for planning commission planning committee which is what he wanted to set up talked about planning how science and technology had to be planned for an independent India then you have the whole bunch of people who are involved with medicines for example and Sahab Singh Soke was in the British India Army but he was a doctor he was very close to the left again a very strange that you could have a military army officer being so close to the head or so close to the left but he was also a basically a doctor so he's the one who set up the Havkin really modernized the Havkin Institute to produce in those days vaccines against cholera as well as smallpox and his task was to really make it a mass production center not just as a research center that history is now virtually gone out of the Havkin Institute but Sahab Singh Soke becomes very important because he was a part of India's planning committee on medicine and he was anti-patents and he identified himself clearly with the left and he was a voice which said we have to reform our patent law took 20 more years before we successfully did that and that become the 71 planning for a patent act really the way which is the basis for the Indian pharmaceutical system to merge but a lot of the scientific community which we know which we know had a very important role we did not know their links with the left till I in one of the early conferences that Amit and others like Dinesh and I had organized and in that we found from Jayesh Majumdar who was one of the unions which was in the pharmaceutical industry and the medical representatives so he talked about Sahab Singh Soke and that whole history and then I went back and looked at it and I said my god we never have really written this histories for ourselves and I touched upon this in the Amit book but I also thought that that history we need to recover and let's not forget that history is not an isolated history of ours it also comes from what was the larger left movement among the scientific community in the world we have after all at that point of time apart from the nuclear bomb which of course set a whole bunch of scientists against the bomb but we also had the scientific workers association which came out and from Bernal to you know Joliot Curie in France it's a very important names that were there they're all considered a part of the left and let's not forget we have Haldane who essentially became an Indian citizen and we have the the seven volumes history of China which is again written by a person who was very close to Nidam who goes to China and really writes what would be the the most authoritative text about Chinese science and technology history of course with Chinese colleagues they're all considered up considered themselves to be a part of the left and fought against what of that time were the right to bring policies which are there unfortunately we thought a Bernal thought that when he said science cannot be planned by capitalists and that's why socialism will have will have an edge well the capitalists proved to be more intelligent than that they adopted Bernal's theories his policies and the plan of the science particularly after as you know discovering that the nuclear bomb needed planning in order to develop it because it was going to be a billions of dollars which had to be spent and it could not be done without planning so you got the era of big science introduced of course now because of the film we all are seeing it that because that this is the era of big science and then you have to plan even as capitalists even as capital you need to plan big science and that is where they take over Bernal and say okay we understand what the guy is saying we need to do it too the film you're referring to of course is Oppenheimer also a film which is less in my opinion about the nuclear bomb and more about the attack at the left turns out so many of them including the sister of William Hinton John Hinton worked as a communist in the Manhattan Project probably this book is an extraordinary book and I know it's going to be relished by lots of people it requires a careful reading it's very well written I'm so proud that Leftward has produced it I'd like to come back to you Praveer and do another conversation more in-depth conversation about the role of the left and science perhaps something like socialism and science so let's consider this part one of a series of conversations we can have about this super stimulating book thanks a lot Praveer it's been a pleasure thank you so much for spending so much time on bringing the book out and Leftward for again for a brilliant cover