Scientific Indian

My friend, V Nanjundiah, of theIndian Institute of Science (us) inBangalore has asked me a very pertinentquestion: why cannot Down To Earthcover more on Indian science? I am sureit can; I would definitely like it to. Butthere are numerous problems with theIndian scientific establishment whichmakes it difficult to cover Indian SCi7ence. That is what I want to discuss inthis column.

Firstly, do Indian scientists (in general,andnot specific individuals) want tocommunicate with the public? Andwhat is theyressure on them to do so?My own feeling is that they do not wantto. My colleagues have great difficulty ingetting interviews with Indian scientists.A specific example is of a freelancer Icommissioned, who had done a mastersin physics. Since plague has a lot to dowith rat populations, in the wake of theSurat plague outbreak, we wanted toknow which institutions were monitoring rodent populations. But when thefreelancer approached a scientist at theNational, Institute of CommunicableDiseases in New Delhi, he refused tospeak, saying that my colleague wouldnot understand a thing. The freelancerthen lied, saying he was a masters in lifesciences. The scientist then opened up,but dumped on him a lot of banalities. Iwonder if the same scientist would havehad the guts to tell the health secretaryor the health minister, who are usuallybigger ignoramuses than this youngman, the same thing. I doubt it But it wasquite discouraging for the young man.

Secondly, our science system doesnot demand that science institutionspublicise their work. Let me give theexample of us newspapers like 77W NewYork Times and Washington Post. Everyweek there are at least three to fourmajor stories, often on the fi-ont page,based on the papers published in thelatest issues of prestigious journalslike Nature, Science, Journal of theAmerican Medical Association and NewEngland Journal of Medicine. Thesejournals themselves take the initiative tosend out press releases by fax, forewarning the newspapers about the most interesting stories in their upcomingissues. Institutions like the NationalInstitutes of Health, National ScienceFoundation or the National Aeronauticsand Space Administration (NAsA) regu-larly send out press releases. All theseinstitutions have communicationsoffices whose job is to inform the mediaand arrange for interviews.

Thus, the us science system pushesand prods the media, which in turn,responds by providing adequate space.My experience is that few science institutions in India make this effort. Forinstance, after the collapse of what usedto be Science Today, Dmm, To "Earth hasbecome one of our few popular sciencemagazines. But, though we are completing four years now, I have yet to receiveone letter from the director, or theinformation officer of a laboratorysending me a press release or even oneof its regular publications. The few weget are the ones we asked for. Whichmeans that information will flow to usonly ifwe were to set up a system to collect it ourselves and go out all over thecountry to visit labs and talk to scientistsdirectly. But that, as anyone will surelyrealise, is a tedious and expensive task.

The last point I want to make isabout scientists themselves. Tell me,how many scientists want to write popular science? I know a Jayant Narlikartries. A Madhav Gadgil does. Nanjundiah himself used to love writing forScience Today. Raghavendra Gadagkarat the us also does. But, how manyIndian scientists, despite their numbers,have done a popular book on a scientifictheme they have researched themselves?Is there a Carl Sagan or a E 0 Wilson inIndia? Has a Raja Ramanna or a C N RRao attempted anything like that? Butwhy not? Does not the public need to beeducated?

And yet all this is so important forthe growth of science. I have just beenreading a book called Complexity, whichis a description by a former sciencejournalist of the emerging science ofcomplexity, basically a new disciplinecreated by computer modellers whowant to model life, cells, ecosystems,evolution, economy, and so forth, thatis, complex systems. A fascinating book,I must say. And what I found very interesting was that many of the pioneers ofthis discipline read popular books written by leading scientists to understandissues like molecular biology or evolution. Chris Langton, for instance, gotinto and ftirthered the complex themeof artificial life, reading Lewis Thomas'The Lives of a Cell. These scientiststhemselves had been trained in otherdisciplines and knew nothing aboutissues like evolution and DNA. Popularscience writing was thus promoting, as Icould see in the book, interdisciplinarityin some of the most complex areas ofmodern science. Where would haveenvironmental concern been withoutRachel Carson's Silent Spring?

I was once told by Bernard Dixon, aformer editor of New ScientisA thatwhen the magazine had started, theyhad believed that only, ordinarypeople would read it. But later they discovered that it was being overwhelminglyread by scientists themselves, becausephysicists wanted to read in a popularlanguage what biologists were doing andbiologists wanted to keep abreast ofwhat chemists were doing.

The need to communicate science toth@ public is a culture that has yet todevelop in India. Till then, popular sciencewriting will remain hamstrung. It is sad,but, inevitable. I assure Nanjundiah thatI remain open to every suggestion of his,however. If it is a struggle, so what!