Physical Sciences and The Future of India

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Scientific studies of nature have resulted in profound Changes in our prespective of ourselves and the world around us. As india reclaims its place in the world, our need for understanding science and appreciating technology has increased. Physical Science and the Future of India, therefore, makes it essenial for us to understand the scientific world view as well as power and limitations of science and technology to understand its on our civilisation as a whole.

Mayank Vahia is a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) with a special intrest in science education and its impact om indian civilization. His research interests include space based telescopes for high energy astrophysic to history of Indian astronomy.

Prologue To quote, Don Marquis an American humourist, "if you make people think they’re thinking, they’Il love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you". The purpose of this rather long essay is to look at who we are, and where we are headed.

Science has affected human beings in more ways than we care to acknowledge. Apart from providing material comfort, they have changed our attitude and approach to life, universe and everything. It has been both a boon and a bane to humans in particular and the earth in general. We are in some sense, an epitome of a life formed designed with intelligence as a survival tool. Before us, Nature used a model that was size based and we have the fantastic dinosaurs that ruled the earth. However, eventually the competitive increase in size became self-defeating, destabilising and eventually vulnerable. This vulnerability led to their destruction when a single comet impact was enough to wipe them all out. The current model Nature has chosen is the one based on intelligence. Are we more successful, more or less unstable and can we be wiped out through some catastrophe? While the eternal variety that Nature can come up with are beyond our capacity to imagine, the fact remains that there are many successes and fault lines that we have created on Earth. The present essay is an attempt to understand these issues for the chal- lenges that they provide to the future human existence. In some sense, these are the problems will need the collective human wisdom to handle; they can at least be stated. This is an attempt to state them. So who will take up the challenge? There are really no takers for this task. This is largely because it is poorly defined and equally importantly, it does not admit of a single set of solutions. It is also beyond our conscious reach, probably. It is quite likely that our survival or otherwise will depend more on the whims of Nature than human ability to control their envi- ronment and surroundings. However, that should not prevent us from meditating on such issues.

There is a story in the Indian mythology about churning of the sea and an unwitting release of poison before the elixir of immortality could be obtained. It is said that when Gods and Demons came to know that a pot of elixir existed at the bottom of the ocean, they decided to churn the ocean. The first thing that came out was the pot of poison, which had to be consumed before the elixir could be extracted. No God or Demon was willing to consume it. Eventually, the only intellectual amongst gods, Lord Shiva! offered to consume the liquid, which was too hot even for him. The heat of the poison that he held around his neck forced him to take a snake as his permanent companion.

It seems to me that both men of good and evil, scientists of today and tomorrow are churning the sea of knowledge in search of the elixir. While both are absorbing all the good and evil that is coming out according to their taste - whether in terms of weapons or instruments for betterment of human life — slowly but surely the pot of poison is beginning to emerge and we will need some takers for this. It also seems clear that whether we like it or not, men who pursue science for its own sake and who have been responsible for much of its churning are going to have to take in the poison and the men of good and bad who misused it are going to walk away without qualms. Eventually, whether they like it or not, the scientists will be blamed for the technology they have provided for this chuming, even though, more often than not, they have little or no say in how this technology is used. This essay is a discussion of this great churning of seas of knowledge and to try and guess what the eventual pot of poison will look like. It is an attempt to show how this chuming has changed all around us and to point at dangers of the upcoming poi- son. It is also true that most scientists wilfully refuse to accept this responsibility by claiming that they are only pursuing either their personal curiosities or only creating technologies that are demanded from them by their masters. This is a spacious argument at best. It is necessary that the scientists should at least be aware of what is happening to the society around them due to this relentless pursuit of theirs in search of a better understanding and control of nature and her resources. This small writing is an attempt to put this adventure of science into the perspective of society.

It is dedicated to all those who will be at the front line and will have to take the poison, to wam them that it is coming and to be ready for it and to see what the nature of the poison will be and to work on its absorption.

An apology is perhaps in place here as my basic specialization is in physics and, though I have grown up in an institution where all fields of basic science are pursued, an unavoidable and unfortunate bias to developments in physics are obvious throughout this work. It is not that physics has had a privileged place in development of science; it is just that i am incapable of comprehending the picture in its totality and therefore, if my friends in other fields find this work biased, 1 request their indulgence to the limitations of my Icarning.

An essay of this kind would not have been possible without years and decades of discussions and suggestions by a large number of my colleagues. In particular, I want to thank the Academic Staff College, Mumbai University that first invited me to speak on the subject more than a decade ago and has since been calling me twice or thrice a year to address their new groups of teachers undergoing an orientation course. This, more than anything else, has forced me to keep looking at the world around me more intensely than I would otherwise have done. I must also thank Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which has provided me with environment and opportunity to pursue these ideas. I am deeply indebted to Prof A W Wolfendale, a friend like no other, who has tolerated my limitations and shortcomings, seen the best in me and encouraged me to pursue my interest even when he did not approve of them. I must thank Prof Virendra Singh, who continued to take interest in this tangential pursuit. I also want to thank Mr Kishore Menon who has often provided me with deeper understanding of human nature than would have been possible for me alone. I must thank Dr Leena Rao who encouraged me to pursue while my colleague Dr Nisha Yadav, who helped me in this study. I also thank Prof A A Rangwala, my teacher of 30 years, who made me realize that I must be sensitive to the society I live in. However, a book of this magnitude would not have been possible without the efforts put in by Manipal University. I am particularly thankful to Dr H Vinod Bhat who first encouraged me to submit the book to the University and to Dr Leena Rao who patiently tolerated all my shortcom- ings and impatience to bring this book to its final form. I also acknowledge the support of Dr Mohini Gupta who played an important role in making the book acceptable. Most importantly, I must thank my dear friend and colleague Srikumar Menon who has taught me more than he can imagine. I also thank Kailas Rao for his support during all my visits to Manipal.

Most of the writing here is original but the idea of India discussed in chapter 14 is reproduced from my article in One India One People in August 2012 and the discussion on the social evolu- tion of Harappan Civilization is from a paper that Nisha and I published in the Journal of Social Evolution and History in 2011.

Dr Rajiv Kumar Singh and many others, who have since moved out of my life but contrib- uted deeply in the early period of my evolution of thinking on the subject. Journals like New Scientist and many other popular science journals and innumerable books have contributed in helping me think. I thank them all.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages