Fighting The Real War

Ashok Khosla

The issues confronting today’s policy makers are much more complex than ever before in history.

Of course, much remains the same. Many of the decisions society makes will never change: who gets what, how to maintain order, how to ensure equity and justice. And all of these decisions are fundamentally important.

But over the past hundred years, science has brought forth knowledge and technologies that are truly different – and neither nature nor human society has yet had time to evolve mechanisms to deal with them. Some of the impacts of these technologies are so great, as in the case of CFCs, fossil fuel based energy systems and genetic engineering, that they now dominate much of the international agenda.

Such issues are rarely simple or one dimensional. New technologies often offer huge potential benefits. It is because of technologies developed over the past hundred and fifty years that the world is so much smaller, safer, healthier, and generally better to live in for more people than ever before. It is also the same technologies that pose threats to the very life support systems of our planet. And some of these threats, such as the depletion of the ozone layer or sea level rise could be quite immediate and cataclysmic.

Indeed, the real war of today and tomorrow is the invisible war between technology, global economics and dominance on one side and people, community, ecology and marginalization on the other.

While every individual has some opinion, whatever depth of knowledge it might be based on, concerning economic, social and political topics, the technology related issues are largely left to "experts". And since most experts "know more and more about less and less – until they know everything about nothing", this is quite a dangerous position for society to find itself in.

It is for this reason that we have a crucial need for scientists who have the deepest understanding of the technical details of these issues, not only for their intrinsic scientific interest but also for helping societal policy makers come to considered judgments on how they need to be dealt with. Above all, they must be available to identify the opportunities and benefits offered by the technologies and the dangers they could lead to. Such scientists must therefore be able to go beyond the detailed knowledge of the laboratory and into an understanding of the wider context within which the results of their science will operate. And they must have the courage to speak the truth as they see it, however inconvenient it may be for those who have to act on their advice.

Despite its huge size, the Indian scientific community has not produced or nurtured enough practitioners of this type – ones who fearlessly and objectively can provide the bridge between pure science and policy making. Such policy-science bridges are urgently needed.

It is doubly a double tragedy, then, that within the space of the last 24 hours, two of India’s foremost policy-science bridges passed away, leaving behind a major void in this fundamental, vital sphere of national concern.

Anil Agarwal forged a vocal and highly visible campaign to bring about a better understanding of the environment and worked incessantly to incorporate this understanding into the policies and laws of the land. While every policy advocate knows that trade-offs and compromises will in the end be made to satisfy different social objectives and vested interests, he realized that to get action, a single, persuasively reasoned and strongly stated position is one very effective way to get action. And in this respect, he was truly a world champion.

Satish Dhawan brought India into the space age, creating one of the strongest and most successful ventures set up in independent India, the Indian Space Research Organisation. An extraordinary scientist, researcher, teacher, manager and builder of leaders, his was the quiet and self-effacing route: it would be impossible to enumerate or even identify the full impact of this gentle intellectual giant on either science or policy in our country. Suffice it to say it was enormous, comparable to that of any scientist, past or present. Professor Dhawan’s intellectual interests ranged from rocket propulsion to the flight of birds, from efficient management systems to the process of learning. He was supremely a humanist-scientist, and even above that, a wonderful, generous human being.

Each, in his own way was a fighter – a most valiant fighter for a better world. We will miss them dearly.  q