About the Workshop:

India, it can be argued, was pitchforked into the necessities of ‘Science & Technology' from its inception as an independent state in 1947. Like other decolonised countries, India had to catch up with the industrialised world whilst labouring in the looming shadow of the Cold War. While successive governments supported science to provide solutions to the immediate problems of food and shelter to the masses, they also took steps to place India within the spectrum of global reckoning.  Although such bodies as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), the IITs and the Science Institutes are well known (among others), the wider consequences of their work for wealth creation in the national interest, as well as enhancing security and improving social well-being are not adequately understood or acknowledged.

This workshop seeks to showcase how in the face of economic constraints and societal challenges, the scientific and technological temper of the new nation has been foregrounded in order to obtain, as far as possible, locale-specific solutions for challenges often unique to India. 

How such efforts have played out at different key moments and in varied spheres needs further study and reflection.  A range of topics from the Green Revolution to the software revolution, urban planning to disaster management awaits in-depth study. 

Such illustrative case studies can illumine the choices before scientists, policy-makers and citizens forging India's tomorrow in our new century.

 

Organisers: Prof LS Shashidhara, Prof Mahesh Rangarajan and Dr John Mathew

 

See Schedule