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This thesis is a sociological study of science in the khadi movement, the popular socio-political movement for the revival of hand-spun and hand-woven cloth (khadi) initiated by Gandhi in 1918. By locating the khadi movement within the larger frame of Gandhian science, this study seeks to recover the missing element of science in Gandhian studies a...
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... This is apart from the lesserknown Gandhi Seva Sangh, originally set up with Jamnalal Bajaj in 1923, that he sought to convert into a post-graduate institute of research in 1943. In my work on "Science in the Khadi movement" (Prasad, 2002) I had tried showing that the idea of Gandhi's institutional framework for an alternate science policy did not necessarily die after his death and this notion of the experiment or the Prayog continued much after Gandhi's death as well through institutions like the Khadi Gramodyog Prayog Samiti. One could extend this in the 1970s with many scientists like C V Seshadri, Amulya Reddy and others being inspired by Gandhi even if they never met him (Seshadri and Visvanathan, 2002;Prasad, 2005;Reddy, 2004). ...
... The more I began looking at the archives on Khadi, the more I found Gandhi speaking on science. The article (Prasad, 2002) situates Gandhi's writing within discussions on science policy that often ignores Gandhi. And if I might say so, Gandhi is almost like a subaltern as far as science studies are concerned. ...
The chapter explores 'roads not taken' in Indian science – an incipient vision of an inclusive and people-centric science policy inspired by Gandhi's Hind Swaraj that is probably as relevant today, in the context of India's new Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy 2020. Drawing from Hind Swaraj the chapter exploes Gandhi's views on science beyond Hind Swaraj and refers to a citizen's manifesto on developing a science and technology policy. A manifesto that interrogates expertise and suggests the triad of plurality, justice and sustainability as organising principles to rethink Gandhi's vision of an inclusive society in today's times.
... The ashrams were also sites for practicing experiments in transforming social relations. In ashrams more men engaged in spinning, an activity long seen as women's domain (Shambu Prasad, 2002). ...
... While the post-independent Indian state had no space for dissent, the "father of the nation," Mahatma Gandhi, had been one of the strongest dissenters of western science (Quartz 2010). According to Prasad (2001), Gandhi's work can be understood as a critique of S&T, where not technology transfer but a collaborative effort between experts and civilians is central. Disenchantment with state policy, the violence associated with the Emergency period, and the forced displacement of local populations due to dams triggered the growth of dissenting social movements concerned with forestry-the Chipko movement; the anti-dam struggles-such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan; anti-nuclear protests; and a number of grassroots science movements during the 1970s and 1980s. ...
... (Gandhi, Collected Works, Volume 29: 325, in Prasad 2001: 3724) 38 Gandhi argues for a non-anthropocentric and non-violent science, where the scientist is not to be separated from his object. Responsible satyagrahi scientists would, instead of performing vivisection, engage in self-experimentation and also take conscious decisions about the ethical implications of their work and reflect upon possible impacts (Prasad, 2001a). The site of the scientific quest in Gandhi's understanding shifts from the laboratory to the experimenter's body. ...
This PhD Thesis studies ethnographically how an alternative research project in South India emerges and grows to national scale.
... 11 A review on creative dissent with science and technology in India before and after Independence can be found in (Quartz, forthcoming). 12 Prasad (2001;2008) states that one needs to look at Gandhi's work at a whole instead of only focusing on the Hind Swaraj if one is trying to understand his critique on western science and technology (also see Nandy 1987: 162). 13 He rejects 'scientism' because if would "reduce human rationality to a particularly narrow version of objectivity and objectification and it defines large parts of critical consciousness as irrational, romantic irrelevancies." ...
This article outlines the emergence of Non-pesticidal Management (NPM) in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. By tracing the historical development of NPM since the late 1980s, I aim at demonstrating how the project developed in the (Gandhian) tradition of performing creative dissent with science and technology - a method which combines creative work with (activist) dissent. I address how scientists and activists used the method to generate alternative pest management practices that could help marginal farmers to better cope with their vulnerable livelihood conditions.
This dissertation is a historical study of the socio-material and knowledge practices involved in the making of the modern Indian economy between approximately 1915 and 1965. It explores this subject through the lens of the khadi economy, the name I assign to the network of institutions established by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from the late 1910s to ameliorate rural unemployment and underemployment through the reintroduction of village industries in the Indian countryside. In contrast to most accounts of the khadi economy, which portray it as a traditionalizing zone rooted in a nostalgic vision of the past, I situate it at the heart of processes of modern economy formation in late colonial and early postcolonial India. The history of the khadi economy, I argue, offers critical insights into some of the key developments in twentieth-century Indian economic life, ranging from the changing spatial relationship of agriculture to industry; to the rise of formal organizations and scientific management; to the establishment of standardized weights and measures; to technological innovation. In recuperating the khadi economy as one instance in the making of the modern Indian economy, I provide an alternative perspective on economic modernization. The khadi institutions discussed here did not resist the rise of a modern economy but instead worked to establish a modern economy on their own terms that deployed some of the same tools (scientific management, standardized weights and measures, etc.) in different ways. In attempting to create a modern economy that was nevertheless different from the modern economy that ultimately prevailed in India, khadi institutions offer a unique lens on what exactly was at stake in the modern economy’s creation.
Scholars have hesitated to link the literature on religion and environment to the literature on environmental justice, because religion is often looked upon with scepticism. This article suggests that acknowledging religious motivations can help in shaping environmentalism, within the religious world-views. Specifically, this article explores how Catholic Jesuit priests in India were partly motivated by a Gandhian theology of liberation, which helped them to develop an action-oriented dialogue on environmentalism. The article begins by understanding the historical roots of Jesuit engagement with Gandhian ideals in India. It then explores how this engagement influenced Jesuit theology and contributed to an inter-faith action, while remaining faithful to the Jesuit missionary spirituality of a “faith that does justice”. Using the example of the south Indian Jesuit botanist KM Matthew (1930-2004), this article explores the transformative potential of religion in advocating the case for environmental action. The article contributes to environmentalism by showing how the dialogue between the Jesuit spirituality and Gandhian praxis provided a creative opportunity for working towards an environmental mission inspired by religious motivations. The article suggests that such a “religious environmentalism” offers an important avenue to create a politically informed and environmentally conscious, vibrant earth community.
The Indian social entrepreneurial ecosystem is acknowledged by many as a site for emerging business models that could simultaneously address the challenges of poverty and inequitable growth. But the spurt in social entrepreneurial activity has not been matched by conversations on the diversity of approaches that make Indian social entrepreneurial initiatives unique. We suggest that situating social entrepreneurship within narratives such as ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ or ‘social business’ discounts the rich ways in which social entrepreneurship has been shaped by actors in India including the well-known Ashoka foundation, which began its journey in India. India has been an important site for experiments, a learning laboratory where a vibrant civil society has led social innovation and also demonstrated the role of communities as social entrepreneurs. In this chapter, we suggest that social entrepreneurship in India needs to be explored within a longer narrative of social innovation in India that precedes in many ways the rise of social entrepreneurship as a phenomenon in the twenty-first century in Europe and the United States. In this chapter, we first present a quick overview of some of the recent initiatives in the social entrepreneurial landscape in India presenting some gaps in understanding the social sector from the much-hyped governmental initiatives on Startup India as well as by presenting a case for a rethink on social entrepreneurship in India. We situate the diversity of Indian social entrepreneurship by theoretically grounding it within the larger context of social movements. Second, we look more closely into the idea of producer-owned cooperatives, which emerged in the Indian civil society space, and how these unique social enterprises demonstrate principles of social entrepreneurship quite different from the dominant narratives.
This article studies the development of the Non-Pesticidal Management Project (NPM) that emerged in the late 1980s in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district of the semi-arid region Telengana as a response to accumulating agrarian distress, when chemical pesticides did not help to counter massive pest infestations. The project runs in a tradition of civilian engagement that uses the method of creative dissent, which combines critiques of a particular (societal) condition, technology or mainstream policy with elements of creative and innovative. The question this article addresses is how creative dissent projects like NPM generate agrarian alternatives for development and what the particular contribution of such projects to sustainable development are. The article argues that in order to understand how the small-scale civil society project NPM successively transformed into a large-scale policy option for agrarian development in (and beyond) Andhra Pradesh and how it indeed serves as an alternative to mainstream pest management practices, one has to look into both the material composition of the technology NPM and into how its proponents constructed (and then disseminated) NPM as an agrarian alternative to mainstream (bio-)technology.
These guidelines are the result of dialogue and cooperation between representatives of three major scientific cultures of the contemporary world: European, Indian and African. For this reason, this text can provide some indications about the development of scientific and technological research (STR) on our planet. In particular, the Guidelines are intended to be a practical contribution about how we can promote effective collective responsibility in science and technology. In doing so, this text will offer some information, based on the SET-DEV project (UE), on the social fabric of science, and some suggestions on how scientific and technological research can better integrate into society and be more relevant to society‘s needs.
