Professor C.N.R. Rao, the first scientist to be nominated for
the Bharat Ratna award since C. V. Raman, has in a recent interview done yeoman
service to the nation by shattering some long held and most ridiculous myths
about this country – though I am sure that very few Indians will thank him for
it. Here is
the link to the relevant news item. The text of the report on the
front page of my newspaper is slightly different, but no matter.
This is also a subject I have written on, and not once, on this
blog. Something very close to my heart, perennially.
I discovered that very little science is done in India – as westerners
(who have, let’s face it, done 99% of all the science in the last 200 years) understand
doing science – and that very badly, when I was still an adolescent. Otherwise,
I might quite possibly have gone in for higher studies in some branch of
science myself (and wanted my daughter to do the same): I had the brains, and
upto quite an advanced age, sufficient interest. I am glad to be vindicated in
my views by a scientist of such preeminence, though it has come rather late in
the day, and Professor Rao, being in a very high public position, has pulled a
lot of punches, as I don’t have to.
Still, I am glad that he has said a) IT has very little to do
with science, and might actually be blamed for having done a lot of harm to
science as a whole in the last 20 years (as cricket has done to every other
kind of sport), b) a lot of scientific fields have been grossly and
persistently neglected, c) the IT-rich (and other rich, and successive
governments) have done much less for the advancement of science in this country
than they should have, d) our scientists, many of them lazy careerists with too
little interest in their work, too little nationalistic pride and ambition,
must take a big share of the blame too, e) since Nehru’s time, there might
actually have been a sharp retrogression in the development of a scientific
temper in our society, f) neither science nor God have anything to do with
superstition, which is what is rife in India, g) without spread of mass
education with a stress on nurturing the scientific temper, there can be no
real and long term development, no matter what the stock market says. I find
myself agreeing with every bit of the above.
I wish India would become a truly cultured and progressive
nation again. Which would mean being far less fanatical about fads (and I call
the recent madness over
Chennai Express
as well as Sachin’s retirement – not Sachin’s career itself, mind you – fads),
far less blindly, narrowly, stupidly, cravenly materialistic, far less
superstitious (which – and I am with both Tagore and Subramaniam Chandreshekhar
here – means being far more seriously interested in God, art, beauty,
justice as well as real science, as distinct from technical gimmickry and
dhandaa and hogging and partying), far
less interested in pubbing and mall-crawling, far more keen on good reading,
far more serious about real education (look up my posts under the label
education: cramming a bit of physics and chemistry has very little to do with
it). Which means that greater people than Nandan Nilekani and Chetan Bhagat and
Anna Hazare must be called visionaries. Which means going back to the golden –
or at least silver – age we had just before and after independence, when
cerebral men living simple lives were accorded the highest social esteem, at
least among those who dared to call themselves educated, when no mere bania,
politician, doctor or engineer would have dared to talk as though he were the
equal of Satyen Bose or Bibhutibhushan Banerjee or Nandalal Bose or Alauddin Khan
sahib, when teachers were accorded the respect due to them because society at
least dimly understood the value of what they do, and every Tom, Dick and Harry
couldn’t become a teacher, when corruption would become a minor irritant and
non-issue simply because the vast majority would have realized that life is not
to be wasted making a bit of sleazy money…
P.S., Nov. 19:
This editorial in my newspaper today, in connection with Sachin, science and the Bharat Ratna, is one of the sanest things I have read in a long time.
