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Op-Ed: Knowing the world through science

M V Ramana

It is unfortunate that the administrative decision to cancel the HSTP, a rare example of a success story in primary education, was taken not by the BJP but by a Congress government; it demonstrates how widespread these ideas have become and the danger they pose

About three decades ago, a group of young science graduates started a programme to improve the teaching of science in rural areas in the Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh. Eventually calling themselves Ekalavya, the name of a mythological lower caste archery expert, the group emphasised the importance of making science interesting and relevant to rural children. In response to this initiative, the state government at that time allowed them to try out their curriculum at government schools. Thus emerged the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP).

Despite many successes and widespread praise, on July 3 of this year the current state government closed down the HSTP and stopped the teaching of the HSTP curriculum in government schools. The decision appears to be based on rather superficial reasons and has come in for much criticism from intellectuals around the country, but so far there has been no change in the government’s position.

HSTP focuses on science education for students from classes six to eight. It involves learning “by discovery, through activities and from the environment” rather than “by rote”. Students and teachers are encouraged to ask questions rather than taking what is written in books for granted. Ekalavya also brings out a monthly children’s science magazine, a weekly news feature service that supplies newspapers with articles on science-society issues as well as a teachers’ magazine focused on the needs of elementary school teachers.

HSTP solved two problems for schools in rural areas – poor educational standards and widespread student and teacher disinterest in science, the latter being largely the result of the course content and uncreative pedagogical methods. Due to their emphasis on making the subject relevant to children and the utilisation of local means, HSTP managed to evade these in a creative fashion. The effort attracted the interest of many scientists and professors from institutions like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Indian Institutes of Technology. HSTP eventually covered hundreds of schools and tens of thousands of students.

Ekalavya is part of a larger people’s science movement (PSM) in India and around the world. Groups that are part of this movement try to use science for social change and empowerment. Science is seen not just as the collection or dissemination of “scientific facts” but as a way to make sense of the world we live in.

The world, however, does not consist of only inanimate objects and thus their purview naturally extends to social sciences as well. As K P Kannan of the KSSP (Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad; literally, Science Writers’ Forum of Kerala), an early and prominent group in the movement, put it: “Experience showed a natural science content in every social issue and a social science content in ‘science and technology’. Imbibing and inculcating the method of science to understand not only the physical reality but the social reality as well and attempting to raise relevant questions in order to find solutions to social problems is what gives science an activist role.”

As part of their work, groups belonging to the PSM have conducted important campaigns on environmental and developmental issues. A significant intervention was in the case of the 1984 Bhopal disaster when lethal methyl isocynate (MIC) gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant into the densely populated city. Hundreds of thousands of people were seriously affected; the number of deaths so far is estimated at several thousands.

At that time a number of people’s science groups came together to support the victims through technical, medical and scientific information. Challenging the government’s efforts at concealing the extent of the damage, Eklavya, for example, commissioned independent scientists to monitor Bhopal’s fields, gardens and water supplies for MIC breakdown products and published a “people’s report” on public health concerns in the city.

The combination of being involved in both constructive activities like education and in confrontational activities like documenting the damage due to the Bhopal disaster is typical of the philosophy of PSM groups as well as several other social movements. By engaging in both sunghursh (struggle) and nirman (constructive action), these try to posit a vision of an alternative to the present social, political and economic order that is more just and democratic.

Given the interest of PSM groups in altering the social order in a more democratic and progressive direction, it should not be surprising that they have faced much opposition from rightwing religious groups. In October 1988, for example, the KSSP had organised a series of events all over the state of Kerala as part of a Children’s Festival. This drew the ire of a variety of religious political groups – the ABVP (the student wing of the BJP), the Muslim League and Christian Church managements. A group of KSSP activists were even physically attacked by uniformed members of the RSS.

Such examples are by no means limited to Kerala or even India. In the US, for example, fundamentalist Christian groups have tried to prevent the teaching of the theory of evolution. Based on his long experience with such matters in Pakistan, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Professor of Physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, has observed that “The ‘trouble’ with science...is that it is predicated on the primacy of reason on the one hand, and experimental verification on the other. It recognizes no authority except its own internal logic, has no sages or prophets, and its truths transcend geographical boundaries, cultural divides, and faiths. Finding these facts distasteful, some have insisted on pursuing the chimera of ‘Islamic science’ even at the end of this millennium.”

The cancellation of the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme and the undermining of a rare example of a success story in primary education is another instance of the onslaught of religious, rightwing forces. What is unfortunate is that the administrative decision was actually taken not by the BJP but by a Congress government; it demonstrates how widespread these ideas have become and the danger they pose.

M V Ramana is a physicist and research staff member at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Some of his writings can be found at http://www.geocities.com/m_v_ramana/nuclear.html

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