The Wire:
Delhi: Monday, September 16, 2019.
When
scientists rarely speak out against violence and brutality, what is a
scientific social responsibility policy to do?
Early
last week, the Department of Science and Technology released a draft of its
proposed Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR) policy. The draft argues that
such a policy addresses a need of the hour: to ensure the transfer “of
scientific knowledge and its benefits to society at large”. Acknowledging the
ethical obligation that scientists have, the SSR hopes to “bring about an
attitudinal change in the mindset and work style of the scientific community,
thereby enhancing the social reputation of our scientific organisations”.
Let’s
set aside the more grandiose claims about SSR’s “potential to fundamentally
transform society” for the moment. Its policy directives will be welcomed
warmly by the scientific community, not least because they will applaud the
government’s ability to, in an academic sense at least, define ‘scientific
temperament’. They will sing its praise, speak of how just as corporations are
required to dedicate some of their efforts towards discharging their ethical
responsibilities towards society, so it must be that scientific institutions
should throw their weight behind outreach activities.
Now,
corporate social responsibility is problematic for a number of reasons. For
example, it subtly lends legitimacy to the undue influence that big businesses
have on the political process, provides political cover to corporations that
are otherwise engaged in ethically questionable core operations, etc. So the
question arises: what ethically dubious practices within scientific
institutions might SSR be distracting us from?
The
right direction
Scientific
enterprise is predicated upon the existence of certain freedoms, among them
those to question, dissent, write and speak. While scientists have been known
to show solidarity with other scientists whose freedoms are under threat this
solidarity is also conditional and fractured along the predictable fault-lines
of seniority and caste they have traditionally been far more reluctant to speak
out collectively when civil liberties and democratic rights are under attack.
This is true even when the rights in question are straightforward
extrapolations of the principles upon which scientific activity is meaningfully
and honestly pursued.
Consider
the following sentence from the SSR draft:
…
an institutional mechanism through SSR policy, facilitating easy access to
resources and knowledge, would be a significant step in the right direction.
I
broke into a wry smile as I read that sentence, written earnestly and with no
sense of irony. This suggestion comes on the heels of the passage of a set of
amendments to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which as constitutional
expert Gautam Bhatia has argued compellingly is unconstitutional. The
amendments will render information commissioners subservient to the sitting
government, defeating the purpose of the Act, which as he wrote elsewhere was
to “to redress the imbalance of power between the citizen and the State, by
making the State transparent and accountable to the citizen”.
Honest
scientific activity is premised on the “easy access to resources and
knowledge”, so it is amusing that the government recognises this need when it
wants to communicate “how the investments on [sic] S&T benefit society,”
further legitimising its own rule, but doesn’t think it necessary to ensure an
accountable democratic state.
And
our scientists? They will march for science but not for much else.
Another
part of the policy directive reads:
All
knowledge workers would be sensitised by their institutions about their ethical
responsibility to contribute towards the betterment of society and the
achievement of national developmental and environmental goals.
What
if this “contribution towards the betterment of society” involves fighting for
civil rights, as in the recent case of Prof Hany Babu, or any of the other
academics and public intellectuals who have been targeted by the government? Is
this not, as Noam Chomsky famously argued, an ethical responsibility of
intellectuals “to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according
to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions”? Is it ethical for,
say, a scientist endowed with a comfortable permanent position at a public
university to tolerate the deceptions of governments and remain unmoved by the intrigues
of large corporations as they rob less fortunate people of their civil and
human rights?
Outside
the ivory towers
The
problem here is that when “knowledge workers” undertake their ethical
responsibilities and act in the interest of society, they are frequently
harassed by the government. The message being sent here is truly frightful: “We
decide what is in the best interests of society, and any deviations from our
line will be punished.”
Our
scientific institutions in the form of, say, their tenured faculty rarely speak
out against this violence and reject the notion that they have any
responsibilities in the political sphere. Indeed, their obsequiousness is
well-known and should be a cause for concern. The SSR further exacerbates the
rot within these institutions by bolstering this repudiation. This is to say
nothing of the “wide latitude” given to knowledge workers to choose SSR
activities, which will undoubtedly lead to a proliferation of the sort of
outreach that is often exclusive and alienating.
I
will be the stinker: no aspect of our training as scientists encourages us to
acknowledge that there exists a world outside our ivory towers, that the
privileges we enjoy ought to be used to fight alongside those less fortunate
against oppression and brutality. So the SSR mandate is likely to be discharged
cynically, reduced eventually to a box-ticking exercise that serves
bureaucratic expediency rather than the fulfilment of a higher, more noble
purpose.
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