An incomplete iconography

There were once two aspiring scientists growing up in the Bangalore of the 1940s. One was a physicist, the other a chemist. Both were fired by the quest for new knowledge, both were inspired by the movement of national regeneration promised by the leaders of a soon-to-be-free India. The institutes of higher education in India were then not developed enough, so despite their patriotism both thought it wise to hone their skills in the United Kingdom. Both obtained their PhD8217;s in the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, but returned home immediately after obtaining their degree. While both possessed an intelligence of a high order, neither sought to market theirtalents in the bazaars of the West.

The physicist wished above all to be a theorist, but thought that to pursue that ambition would be an abdication of social responsibility in a country eager to change, grow, develop. He joined the atomic energy programme, personally overseen by the Prime Minister. Like Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru had been appalled by Hiroshima. If anything, he was more deeply wounded by the act, for his faith in the practice and philosophy of science had been all the greater. For Nehru, the generation of atoms for peace8217; could help redeem the promise of science and rid it of the ugly stain of Hiroshima. So he supported his friend Homi Bhabha and the Atomic Energy Commission to the hilt. No government department has been so generously funded or so completely insulated from bureaucratic and political interference. The conditions were highly conducive for scientists of merit, as for instance our young physicist from Bangalore.

Meanwhile his fellow townsman, the chemist, trained also at theImperial College, returned to Bangalore to join the faculty of the Indian Institute of Science. If the AEC and its component elements, such as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre runs one of the few world-class Indian technical research programmes, the IISc is the only Indian institution that equals a top-flight western university. Our chemist threw himself into teaching and research, writing an acclaimed book on his chosen field, electro-chemistry.

But like the physicist he came to believe thatpure8217; research was an unpardonable luxury in a country as poor as his. With some colleagues he established a group that would promote the Application of Science and Technology for Rural Areas8217;. ASTRA for short, incidentally the name of Indra8217;s weapon, but in this case an endeavour wholly non-violent. The tasks ASTRA set itself were the generation and dissemination of technologies that would be low-cost, non-polluting and of benefit to the poorest of the poor. Such as biogas plants, smokeless chulhas and houses madeof mud blocks, all promoted by ASTRA with some success in the villages and towns of Karnataka.

ASTRA was established in 1974. For all his work in the more conventional fields of science the chemist came to regard the creation of ASTRA as his most lasting achievement. Oddly enough, it was also in 1974 that our physicist from Bangalore oversaw what is considered to be his most decisive contribution to Indian science. This was the nuclear test carried out in the Rajasthan desert in the summer of that year, the necessary precursor to the tests that our nation is now, for the most part, so fulsomely commemorating.

As the Father of the Indian Bomb8217; the physicist has been much in the news recently, his opinions on the newest tests respectfully quoted and conveyed to the public. Raja Ramanna needs no introduction, but most readers of the Indian Express would, I think, be unfamiliar with the name of A.K.N. Reddy, the chemist whose career has so many tantalizing parallels with his. They share a home town, aLondon alma mater, a deep and abiding commitment to their land. Where they differ is in the choices they have made in the direction of their scientific research. Where one has devoted his science and his life to the greater glory of the Indian state, the other had tried to bend it to the service of the Indian villager.

Two paths for Indian science, only one of which is visible in the certificates so handsomely dished out to the heroes behind Pokharan. But should we shout Jai Vigyan8217; only when science makes a terrific noise, when it announces to the world that India yields to no one in the manufacture of weapons of mass extinction? Should not one rather judge the creations of science and scientists by the criteria offered in these pages by the Grand Old Man of Indian architecture, Laurie Baker, namely, that these should be non-violent, eco-friendly, and poverty-reducing?

I think today8217;s aspiring scientists need to know that their contributions to the India of tomorrow do not necessarily lie in theAtomic Energy Commission or the Defence Research and Development Organisation. They must learn as much about Laurie Baker as of Abdul Kalam, of A.K.N. Reddy as well as Raja Ramanna. They should certainly be acquainted with what Mahatma Gandhi told the students of the Science College in Trivandrum more than seventy years ago: 8220;Unfortunately we, who learn in colleges, forget that India lives in her villages and not in her towns. India has 700,000 villages and you, who receive a liberal education, are expected to take that education or the fruits of that education to the villages. How will you infect the people of the villages with your scientific knowledge? Are you then learning science in terms of the villages and will you be so handy and so practical that the knowledge that you derive in a college so magnificently built 8212; and I believe equally magnificently equipped 8212; you will be able to use for the benefit of the villagers?8221;

These words, spoken in 1925, cannot be considered out of date. For India isstill a land of villages. Villages where the work of modern science has scarcely penetrated, villages for the most part bereft of clean energy, safe water, reliable housing. Here lie the real challenges for Indian science.

But who is to confront them, when the makers of missiles and the blasters of bombs are the sole scientists to be held aloft as icons and role models?Ramachandra Guha8217;s books include The Unquiet Woods and Social Ecology