Minutes

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Minutes of the workshop on Technology, Governance, Citizenship

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Day 1 Panel 1

Issues for Round Table

- Disagreements about what is science, art, economics; in the light of inequalities, power

- - Predetermined notions of community – unpack

- Technology is a Social Construct. ALL Tech? Only e-gov special?

- Maturity of Indian s/w development

- Balancing decelopment services with commercial services

- Citizens v Consumers

Kiran Technology is a Social Construct

Ashok Rao

Implementation of Fund Based ACcounting System : BBMP , BATF , NCRCL

Outcome desired is accountability and transparency. Now anyone can ask the Bangalore City Corpn for a balance Sheet. Financial statements are published 2x/year; presented to citizen's groups every quarter.

How did we start? White paper to Govt of Karnataka: we had to sell this to the state govt first before we could even start dialogue with the Bangalore City Corporation. A complete new set of regulations had to be brought about (using the power given in the Act see BMP Accounts Regulations - available on the Bangalore Corpn website). The Council of the corporation (the group of elected reps) passed these regulations.

OK, State govt was ok with it, how do we ensure that the Corporation continues with it? There was a MoU between Govt of K and Bangalore Mahanagar Palike. The grant was contingent on several reforms, one of which was the transition to the new accounting system (FBAS). This model is being followed by the GoI too.

Rene Ejury: Who Can You Trust?

Free IT Consultant, Free Software Deceloper, Germany

About trust How to create a trustworthy esolution

Right amount of oxytocin we can trust anybody

A mechnism to reduce social complexity – Luhmann Enables reasoning by intuition Hard to claim and easy to loose Belief in honesty, benevolence and competence No external measurement

This is a social thing – we can trust peopkle but

Can we trust computers, e solutions, non-living artifacts?

Trust in the creators of those artifacts: company, employees, manufacturers, engineers, marketing division, etc

Why trust computers? They often don’t do what we expect them to do Shouldn’t we stop trusting the people who create those things? We often have no choice – so its better if we trust them (also if we know better, we just ignore the reality). The market seems to do the evaluation for us. Its easy for them to gain our trust, if they claim to have lost your trust based on incompetence. – ie we did it wrong, we discovered the mistake, we corrected it in this verion.

Trust has implications for security, privacy, freedom ,,, You have to trust your esolutions, or you wikl lose all this.

Afternoon Panel 2

Amarnath Raja

Here is a story of how NGOs and govt cooperated Tsunami story -- NAgapatinam district, Tamilnadu: Near Trichy/ Tanjore, 145 km of coast (Kaveri delta); Pop: 15 lakhs; surrounds teh union terriroty of Karaikal 26th Dec: Tsunami 28th SIFFS team from Trivandrum starts Amar and a friend Annie started from Trivandrum on 29th evening with their own car. Just before that Vivek (SIFFS CEO) asked, Can you take 2 people with you? Sushma and Nalini from Abhiyan joined them. On the 30th they reached Tranqbar - 2nd Tsunami warning. Sneaked past guards, got to the coast, saw everything; there was a 2nd tsunami warning. Body burial - JCB (earth movers) - taragambadi boat house, burying dead bodies. On the 31st distict collectors oranised an NGO meeting -to set up a point for NGO volunteers to report and coordinate their activities. Nobody willing to take that up; Amar and all offered to do it (the horrors of the field were still with him, and that seemed simpler). So a tent was set up in the collectorate grounds. Amar's laptop had a GPRS antenna; he connected his laptop and all journalists were using it - one of the first connectivity points in the disaster area.

From the 2nd, huge truckloads were coming in - Indians donating lavishly - it was so overwhleming, some suggested stopping all trucks; clothes and everything were lying all around so - problems of supply-side relief. What is being distributed is not based on what people want , but just on what is being supplied. We thought of reversing things, asking What do People Need? We will give that. We knew the capabilities of people because at our tent people were registering. Tsunami web site was started. Internet Facitilites at the tent. 100 cell phones donated (bhoomika); Volunteers with cell phones posted at each village. Central help desk receives calls, looks up the NGO and volunteers list. 3rd Jan: ARrival of the PC! This website had become very powerful - intnl NGOs from everywhere were checking the website. One big guy came very annoyed that his name is not on the website - I need my name here; he kept coming daily. why are you bothered, we asked - then we realised funding agencies were looking at this site to see who was registered and working here, so they can be funded. So this became a crazy thing. We were very careful after that in putting up names.

Amarnath Raja (continued)

Demand-side relief requires coordination, but is more efficient – people get what they need. We used a computer and a spread sheet – very simple – but we developed a knowledge of what was required ; where and made matches so there was feedback of supply and needs/ services. Word spread abou the NGO center and computer; Anyone who cam eo the tent who had any knowledge of typing or computers we sent them to do data entry – like eg a big gang from IIT came.

Because of this simple system --- Govt haded over its inventory to us! After 1 month I had to go back to my job. The formation of NCRC Feb 1 2005 – Primary aim of coordinating NGO activity during rehabilitation phase. Co-operating and expediting givernment processes (by now we had a very good relationship with Govt) Using ICT in rehabilitation SIFFS – SNEHA and UNDP set up NCRC/ President Clinton visits Nagai To see the Public Private Partnership and NCRC

Network Design We established an internet hosting center at Nagapattinam and established a wi fi link over 145 km. With simple PHP based sites we have linked a public grievance system to the Collectorate; Video conferences [2.5. mbps] are being help – the Collector doesn’t even have to go there, the person can just come to the center and video conference with the Colelctorate.

Indians showed the world we know how to help ourselves

Rameesh Kailasam

Oracle HP e-Governance Center of Excellence – with the participation of PWC, Red Hat, CMC, NIC , SIFFY, CGG , IIIT

What do we trust every day in this country? We trust brakes and the ability of the drivers to apply the brakes.

What are the Issues in e Gov? Reinventing the wheel: Say someone does something good in one State; another state might have cadre issues, ego issues, and they would do it their own way.

Insufficient institutionalization of initiatives: It was a champion-driven approach, so the project would die if champion left.

Evolving funding and sustainability models; Lack of service level agreements; business process re engineering; how to protect privacy and security? How do we measure the outcome of an egov initiative? Are govts leveraging power of IT or are they simply digitizing?

Good givernance means competent management of a countrys resources and affairs in open, transparent, accountable …. Way.; All govt services should be accessible to the common man. This is what is motivating the gov tto creat citizen-centri services. This is what you find in the National egovernance website.

Here Dr KR Srivathsan intervenes to say this is a wrong notion. In this country we don’t understand what government is about. The fundamentals: well defined policies; IT , architecture, standards, core infrastructure, well laid e gov blueprint; roadmap for depts., process engg; policy and clarity on PPP models; project mode to product mode; secure databases; statewide roll outs ; strong political commitment; disaster recovery. [note Hyderabad is a on a different tectonic plate from delhi so it has been idenitified as a secure place. Huh? Well actually the NIC was just strong enough to push for Hyderabad.]

The fundamentals: well defined policies; IT , architecture, standards, core infrastructure, well laid e gov blueprint; roadmap for depts., process engg; policy and clarity on PPP models; project mode to product mode; secure databases; statewide roll outs ; strong political commitment; disaster recovery. [note Hyderabad is a on a different tectonic plate from delhi so it has been idenitified as a secure place. Huh? Well actually the NIC was just strong enough to push for Hyderabad.]

Several slides on the Ideal Information System.

Doing egov is like driving a car – it depends on a lot of other things, like other cars, other drivers, other people on the road.

Pandian from Mapunity

GIS and Governance – Geography for Development; Founded Dec 2006 by Ashwin Mahesh, Alagesa Pandian, Pradeep BV

Many of the problems in Governance cannot be addressed ina very structured way – in fact they are interconnected and seem never-ending. We are not in the space of actually solving problems. We make an impact.

Mapunity = map + community, a software platform to help groups of people creat, gather, organize, etc

Challenges in local public administration: Operation in silos; unpredictability; lack of madate; infrastruture; specialist knowledge or domain expertise missing; accessibility

In a mutlidisciplimary arena in which govt and citizens often don’t connect, we treat SPACE as the common thread Eg Property taxes; Traffic; Trash; Public toilets; Water taps : every problem has a spatial element. How can GIS make an impact? GIS lets us know the importance of tiem and space. EG Traffic is a spatio-temporal phenomenon. So is water shortage, electricity shortage – seasonal, time dependent.

KR Srivathsan Community- Driven GIS Thematic Communities (TC) Objective: To provide effective dynamic knowledge empowerment system for the TC as collective/community enterprise/ service

Instrumenting Geographic Objects: Each GO is equipped to upload certain info from sensors, or manually entered (like farm produce type and quality) -- Develop a virtual business community. Example - Cochin Intnl Airport seting up Cold Storage warehousing for perishable exports. Building Knowledge Plants (like, chemical plants, industrial manufacturing plants – I am an electrical engg, so I think in these terms).

We need a Wed 2.0 accessible spreadsheet or object database associated with each GO (here the GO is the farm). Interactive Web GIS browswer accessible interface for a community portal. Eg “My Farm Desktop” with some elements for access/update from mobile devices in the farm.

We cal the approach Community Instrumentation Systems over Geography since is is similar to SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition ) systems in engg plants. Local systems which manage internal procesesl and a supervisory service that manages feed-forward and services for process management). Feed forward control look is a preventive measure – intervention is not needed but just in case of problems there is feed forward. Another example is KISSAN-Kerala. Services Access and Delivery, with a Bakend Knolwedge Management and Collaboration Protal. This is now being taught in Kerala universities as a model of e-extension services. And it will soon be implemented in Uttaranchal.

Knowledge Empowerment of Tcs – a multiparty KM framework. Challenge: To understand and maintain the roles of relevant parties in the KM chain; to Ensure each party at different levels plays role effectively. Eg KISSAN provides dynamic information and needs driven knowledge pmpowerment on demand from any farmer. The framework of GIS enabled community enterprise systems provide new smart eGov paradigms in many areas. It enables eGov by the cmnth, of the cmnty and for the collective good. It allows people to be creative in coming up with smart solutions and services. Small farmers feel very much empowered. There are new areas like Community health, rural employment generation, better disaster management, etc.

December 5th 2007

             INTERROGATING  INDIA’S ‘BIG SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY’ 

A brief note: A.R. Vasavi, NIAS, Bangalore

I write as a non-specialist in STS issues and perspectives and the following brief points are drawn primarily from observations and not from any detailed study or review.

Studies or research agendas for STS in India/ Indian STS may need to factor in the fact that S and T in India have been driven primarily by the government. The recent establishment of S and T institutes and even research centres (eg Reliance Basic Science etc.,) are only newcomers with a strong commercial orientation. The linkage between S and T and society may be associated with the governmental role in promoting and even associating itself with ‘big S and T’. By big S and T, I mean the large atomic, space, defence and other programmes that are legitimized as part of nation-building and are promoted as central institutions and activities, and backed with substantial funds.

Atleast two key programmes and one trend in the deployment may be interesting.

I: Green Revolution I and II: both based on the legitimizing narrative that S and T can resolve the low productivity problem of Indian agriculture. Overlooks the social and economic bases of problems in Indian agriculture. ‘Productivity’ as a legitimizing trope….its links to other problems such as ecological degradation, consolidation of establishment agrarian structure, and continuation of underdevelopment remain unaddressed.

II. High Tech to resolve issues of Mass access: Eg, EduSat of ISRO. Based on idea that problem of access of education in remote areas and for large masses can be resolved through deployment of high tech. Oversight of key issues of communication. Legitimising big S and T as agency and source of resolving India’s development problems.

III. Medicalisation of the Chikungunya epidemic. Since 2004-5, vast regions of India, esp the south are affected by the virus. Epidemic seen as an medical issue, oversight of the ecological, work, and nutritional bases of this epidemic. Clear linkages between S and society.

If the above are some examples that highlight the linkage between ST and Society, especially as mediated by State, then the following are some key issues that can be reviewed:

1. Linkages between the bases of legitimization, modes of implementation, and subsequent impact of any of the big ST programmes.

2. Linkages between the source of T and S and as adapted in India. Localisation and its own trajectory.

3. Result of displacement of knowledge; eg, in agriculture.

4. The national use of S and T programmes and the making of S and T ‘heroes’. S and T heroes as ‘national icons’ and linkage to the politicization of S and T.

5. Social background of key S and T personnel; caste and class background and implications for constructions and use of S and T.

6. The S and T cadre, their constitution, linkage to State and development, implications in the globalisation (of knowledge, technology, and high-end labour).

Day 2

Introduction : Zainab Bawa , PhD student CSCS Why are we discussing what we’re discussing today – yesterday we ended with, why are we talking about technology and how does it make a difference to the world? Tech doesn’t come from a vacuum and doesn’t settle into a vacuum. So let’s talk about the context of technology’s situation. Remember Fernando de Soto’s experiments with land tenure. Does land title strengthen the capacity of the State to perpetrate violence ? What does efficiency do to the command line change? Can there be a scientific intervention in governance? Increasing citizen participation. Putting information online. Is this information always neutral? At this point let us start with the first panel.

Panel 1

Nishant Shah, PhD student CSCS, and Info Architect, COMAT Technologies (a PPP for egov projects in India) Information technology in India – Bangalore and Ahmedabad

Governance by selection: case of sabarmati riverfront. What is the brief context? There is a complex relationship between the production of an ideological nation state and technology, spaces that we live in. Shopping malls, SEZs, , etc (see Nishant’s presentation)

Leo Saldanha

Don’t like to use the word citizenship, since in a few years political boundaries will disappear (global warming, floods, etc).

Does the govt have a mechanism to engage the public at large to engage, collect, collate, analyse information? There’s been a jump since the age of advertisement: Ask any government agent, “Its on our website.” Or “Google It”. For eg the master plan for Bangalore development – get it from CIVIC, zerox it. But what do the 7 million people do? What’s on the website is a set of textual statements that mean nothing; no maps of course. Claims of transparency – websites are a great mask for govt departments to wear to pretend transparency. Information is not an end in itself, its only a first step to a dialogue. How do elected representatives work? Nothing is written down; its all about who you know, the phone calls you get, who you can talk to. Why cant we build fraternity instead of bureaucracy? Democratic subterfuge takes place instead of dialogue Who has good information systems? People who are affected. People who lost their land in the BMIC acquisition for highways, for instance, with no research training , have put together huge jigsaw puzzles of information which are superb examples of research – it is organized towards an aim, a goal of saving themselves from this abuse, harassment loss of land, etc. I can go on with examples in which IT is being misused, a slap in the face of democracy – the politics of control of power, govt decides what to share, how to share it. So we need to go back and figure out older (pre-IT) modes of sharing information, acting democratically.

Zainab Bawa, The Dynamics of Urban Politics – Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) in Mumbai

Praja (NGO) was responding to citizens of Bombay who said that complaints were the major issue for them. So Praja started lobbying bureaucrats to try and get a project implemented to use technology to monitor complaints. Finally, in April 2002, OCMS implemented. Within 6 months another system called CARE was launched. And later on some other NGO launched another system.

In OCMS, Complaint enters a central database; it is flagged; escalated if not addressed or solved. Top level is the municipal commissioner. Obviously this is not as controversial as Bhoomi, but it is another context to understand what happens when systems like this are put into place. Different socio-economic groups of people have different demands which they make on the city. Municipality has different resources at hand to respond to peoples’ complaints. Officers have to make decisions every day to decide who gets what resources.We use corruption too easily to describe that process and the way those decisions are made. Senior bureaucracy is involved in passing large projects which are implemented by the Field-Level bureaucracy. Would an online system open up this hierarchicall, faction-defined bureaucracy, or to align the hierarchies ? There is also a divide between bureaucracy and politicians. Urban administration unfolds within these competing groups with different interests. One has to understand the situational dynamics without saying this is bad or corrupt. Now, the administration was already a maze, and the new range of online systems introduce more mazes within these old mazes. Example, Illegal building construction is one of the most common complaints. Say if I have a disagreement with a relative, I could register 10 complaints anonymously in the OCMS. Or, if a poor family Is running a home-based business, they could extend a small shed. If you go and demolish that what will happen to their livelihood. Sometimes politicians who are responsible to their constituencies know this, and instruct their people not to demolish those constructions, even though they might be illegal. Lot of demands for information come in; when voice is given to citizens, the bureaucrats also spend a lot of time responding and putting this information online. The use of each option has an impact in the larger system.

We have this normative fancy notion of Public Private partnership. But we need to look at these specific issues before concluding about them.

Day 3

Kavita Philip, Introduction

• Many issues from the 1st day were about how to design technology for a developing country
• Assumptions from 1st day: that technology is inherently good and useful
• Second day: questions emerging about the assumptions, including debates about different models of democracy
• second day ended with what technologists might see as an "unmanageable complexity" - now time to go from there
• a fear of letting messiness into governance, which many at TGC were calling for

Two narratives emerged:

• "progressive" potential of egovernance

- eg. spreadsheet during tsunami, eKrishi portal for farmers, map for traffic - well-intentioned

• "masking" potential of technology: ways technology masks government violence

- information reified, publicity as propaganda to hide real networks of communication, ebureaucracy as an emerging form of power, technology as politics by other means

• Science and technoolgy as neutral language

- objectivity? freedom and democracy? economic development for all?

• Words matter

- eg. egg and sperm metaphor (martin)

• Technoscience has a political economy (eg. environmental politics - Harvey)

• Technoscience Studies offers a way of thinking critically about [stuff]

• STS - science and technology studies

- includes many threads: philosophy of science -> cultural studies of technoscience - a sudden proliferation of modes and methods

• why STS?

- science has been invoked as a universal discourse - paradigm shifts are unique and interesting points in history - open up new spaces

• useful categories for STS:

- History of science and technology (more on that today from Abha Sur and Rohan D'Souza)

- Saskia Sassen: international cities, networked

- many new things about the Internet, but there are many parallels and terms that we are working with - eg. maps of the Internet, which are based on previous mappings....history echoes through our current understanding of new technologies

- David Harvey 1996 - typology of forms of environmentalism

- all ecological projects are political, economic and social as well. Speaking for nature, or information, or whatever, also comes from a particular position.

• science and technology don't give a space away from politics

• paradigm shifts open up space for tinkering, space for engaged theory and practice

QUESTIONS: Rob: talk more about 'black-boxing' of paradigm shifts Kavita: hard to say we are going through a paradigm shift when you're within it. So will look at an older one: eg. shift from Newtonian to Quantum paradigm seen as just correcting some issues...but there were also many political changes at the same time... scientists working on these questions saw philosophy as central and intrinsic to their work...eg. heisenburg. Questions that had been disallowed in the 17th century were then brought back into science. Rene: discussion of voting machines from yesterday. Srivatsan yesterday just said, 'it's working', but there are other questions that need to be addressed. Kavita: not at stake for engineers was the nature of democracy, but social scientists and others were bringing them up. Rene: there is a distinction between different types of scientists - scientists and engineers...should distinguish there, not between scientists and engineers. Engineers just do things, they don't look around. Scientists and social scientists look around more. Joy: current mindset of engineers is that of plumbers and fitters in previous generation in India. plumbers, fitters, ... Mutha: that assumes plumbers and fitters are not creative! Raahima: engineering is meant to include design, and other considerations, not just technology Kavita: also want to say that designers sometimes ask profound questions. Mutha: we're not trying to disciplinise these issues... ????: want to bring it back to science: practising scientists bracket out many things, in order to only ask questions that they can answer...brush out whatever messiness is there... Kavita: philosophy of quantum physics got shunted into the dark corners after a couple of decades. Spaces of dissent are brushed to the margins or are dissented. We should create a space for these questions to be answered, not necessarily whithin the disciplines but somewhere - this is a do-able task for us. Dinesh: are we black-boxing competence ... plumbers here work in bathrooms that they can't relate to, don't have and don't aspire to... once plumbers learn more they move up to being managers ... Kavita: open-source programmers were seen as hobbyists at first - now it is contested, they are being mainstreamed Rob: hobby-scientists are also now seen as important...albeit as threatening, in the context of terrorism Rene: we can't know everything, we can't include everything Dinesh: but that doesn't mean accepting black-boxing. Black-boxing allows us to feel that we know everything. Joy: black-boxing technology and black-boxing people is different. Kavita: some anxiety yesterday from social scientists saying that they can't handle learning websites, OSes, everything. Same as technologists' fear that learning all the political stuff is also too much. Rob: We learn by forgetting...you learn to do it but then you forget it... Kavita: can ask what we forget, and what we choose to forget. Dinesh: untrained people can learn more, because they don't have a preexisting idea of how to learn things.

ESHA SHAH

• Black box metaphor invoked in comparing development studies and STS

• Why are development studies and STS not talking to each other?

• Do make a distinction between science and technology... talking more about technology

• STS generally silent on the politics of technology-lead development in developing nations

• taking visvanathan's argument forward

• disciplines are talking past each other because they black-box each other. both disciplines have failed to develop a powerful critique of technological change

• "Technology and Culture" - one important journal

• once technologies are developed, they become hard to change - should therefore try to change things during the early period of development

• Latour: technology is society made durable

• critiques of science and technology are rarely a part of mainstream development debate... come in more through social and environmental movements

• Wants to reinvent the debate on the Green Revolution in order to bring STS and development debates into discussion

• "Mode of production debate" - carried out in Economic and Political Weekly

• social impact of GR - transformation of agrarian relations. Other questions - difference between what changes happened and what predictions were made by academics.

• "Making and breaking of rural governance in India"

• 1980s - several agrarian-minded political parties emerged...new farmers' movements. Eg. KRRS.

QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION: Rene: Where does STS come from? Research about technology's social role - it came from the political sphere... eg Technology Assessment Board in 60s in US...also in Germany... why did it lose that political aspect and become academic? Esha: STS ... issues were debates, but were not central. Dinesh: was Visvanathan talking about what he wanted from STS or ... ? [referring to opening quote] Narmada Dam has brought so many people into STS. Esha: Visvanathan was not really talking about individuals. It is more of a lament, a desire that STS should intervene in the debate and inform debates like Narmada Dam. ????: On the one hand we are constantly talking about breaking boundaries, but on the other hand we are trying to limit what we label the 'sts' community. There were great debates around the Narmada Dam...they are already STS debates, why not just claim them? Esha: I am trying to reinvent these debates as STS debates. These debates did happen. The question of opening the black box was opened in great detail. But that could have been a chance to open up a much larger debate about the role of technology in society, but that hasn't really happened. Joy: even though there were many critiques of the dam, it still happened. You can't discount power. ????: Any time politics enter, we no longer call it 'stss'. Esha: but why is that? ????: because we are all saving our own behinds, because it would mean taking a political stance. Esha: but people in development studies are not saving their behinds, they are very political Carol: question of the division between West and, in the case, Indian debates. People in the West have not looked at these local debates. Should think about how to cross that boundary. Esha: there is a geopolitics about these debates. This is why the Dam was never discussed as a major debate in STSS. Academics do deal with issues of power, but STSS has deliberately not done this. ????: Does STSS fear to raise the issue of power because then it loses its own disciplinary identity. Dinesh: STSS is actually a much broader field than those who actually fall within "STS" disciplines.

ROB LAFRENAIS and Yashish Shetty (Sp?)

• 2041: Antarctica becomes up for grabs
• "cultural utilization" [current buzzword] of space exploration
• creating of a cultural discourse around India's space exploration.

• the arts catalyst:

- art projects that raise political and social questions - commission work, but also embed artists in scientific contexts - challenge: to intervene in science in an authorised capacity while being able to critique it - currently has been little questioning of difficulties of artists working in other domains, including within scientific establishments - problems for artistic community: influence has to be bought at the price of autonomy. Artist-in-Residence positions give a space for play, but within a controlled situation.

Projects (arts catalyst):

• Nuclear/Atomic project...

- James Acord?? - has a license to own nuclear rods... wanted to make a nuclear sculpture.

• Beatrice DaCosta - cowriting a book with Kavita - fake corporation, bringing in public to make decisions on creating a transgenic organism
• "Clean Rooms" exhibition
• deformed amphibians project. (xray of a frog)
• artists working in areas of low gravity
• Macrolab project: originated in Slovenia. Now "interpolar". An "autonomous national space" in antarctic...setting up a connection between indigenous people in the arctic and antarctic.
• a choreography for landscape
• wave-particle
• Kefir Grains
• "a totally frivolous use of zero-gravity" - flying carpets!
• Production line of bioart Stuff - training in tissue culture and so on for artists
• Biowarfare experiment off the coast of Scotland - releasing germs in the water, seeing the effects on animals (none)
• artist sent a chair into space (balsa wood and plastic) - "escape vehicle" - sent up on a meteorological balloon... with a camera.

• The Arts Catalyst is publicly funded.
• M55 - life on mars...
• "space baby" - sleep gene - long term space travel

• The question of autonomy - if you set up a situation for someone from a different discipline is in a scientific context, how do they deal with it? And in India the mythology of science is very strong, critiquing it is even tougher here.

SHASHI:

• Artist in Residence at NCBS (national center for biological sciences) - for about 8 or 9 months.
• Work focuses on whether it is possible to have an artistic intervention into the scientific process...
• Enjoys navigating the heirarchies of scientific institutions, although not yet in a position to critique them.

ROB:

• Question of how to explain art within a scientific institution. One trap: scientists think art is about beautifying their work. Can explain to scientists the notion of art as process... " I'm not making art for you, you are the art".
• A working curator.

Shashi:

• hierarchies of theory and practice exist within science itself - eg. physicists look down on astrophysicists.

Rob: getting your hands dirty is a great experience for artists. Scientists think of artists sitting around talking about concepts... one of the most interesting things for artists is getting their hands dirty.

Kavita: artists are just involved - they are tinkerers and hackers. Artists are theorists and practitioners.

Rob: artists have a tricky relationship with activism. Critical Art Ensemble, for example, see themselves as activists who've got caught up in art. Whereas we see them as artists. Many artists become activists, but I don't think artists need to be tied by outside forces to agendas.

Raahima: brought up notion of 'cultural workers'

Kavita: STS scholars are concerned about boundaries, so curators are interested in the boundaries between art and activism... but actually it is all messy...

Rob: and I stand up for that messiness...

Kavita: 17th and 18th century process of 'cleaning up' of science was taking out the poetry from scientific writing

Rob: problems with rocking the boat when it comes to getting funding. Can't get through the door if you try to march into it. Having been invited through the door you have to behave in a certain why.

Kavita: same issues as yesterday - how do we go about activism?

Rene: influence of art may be far more than the influence of social sciences. Engineers are inspired by science fiction, which is art. The power of artists is to imagine how the world might be. Do you agree? And so then can we extend the idea of subvertion to .... ?

Rob: there is a big debate in our organisation now about science fiction... I am arguing for it. Science fiction often gets shoved away into a corner somewhere.

Kavita: many of the processes that we're talking about are being reimagined here...

Raahima: we're talking here about highly technologised societies where there are these official avenues for artists in scientific establishments. In India there are many artists who are not even recognised as artists. What are our definitions of art in a post-colonial situations? Need to ask also who will sustain artists.

Rob: there is an international infrastructure that does include India. It's a problem once you start introducing "tribal/outsider/etc" art and commodified it.

Raahima: this is a little ahead of what I wanted to say. You need to understand these issues in this context ... can't work within the same paradigms in India.

????: why would this NCBS director want you? Also, art is not necessarily messy..it gets canonised.

Rob: yes, art gets black-boxed, so you have to keep moving.

Kavita: and that is a political choice.

????: notion of aesthetics is hierarchical...

Rob: there are endless debates about beauty. In science it is often interpreted as symmetry.

Kavita: google Sub Rosa feminist interventionist art.

Shashi: artists are taken in because they are seen as mediators between the scientists and the public. There is a confusion about what art is.

Critical Arts Ensemble - working with the Arts Catalyst - guy got arrested for bioterrorism.

AFTERNOON PANEL

PRIYA

• working on issues of equity and water for most of my research life.
• case study rather than a theoretical discussion.
• Profound changes taking place in many sectors, including water.

• water governed state by place. Talking here about Maharashtra. Similar processes in health, power, etc.

• Changes taking place with water:

- demand-oriented approach. Not so much demand from people but from local-level institutions, like Gram Panchayat. Decentralisation. - privatisation.

• Wants to see how these processes are linked to discourses of development and water.
• links to larger questions about rights, equity, neoliberalism, use of resources, etc.
• Different discourses affect things. Dominant discourse: scarcity of water, and question of security. Has been a lot of criticism of this discourse, questioning of the idea of scarcity.
• also different ideas of development - what a city should be like... eg. 24/7 water.
• move towards individual village-based water supply systems - often piped water supply systems. Discourse used to justify/motivate this is very community oriented. (not necessarily the reality.)
• Language in the city around water far more commercial.
• reform is at least partly motivated by a change in lending institutions - changes from project-based funding to sectoral funding.
• the sectoral focus misses a big part of the picture.... so for each sector, it is assumed that users contribute 10% of the cost - doesn't seem like so much, but it is a lot when you look at all the sectors together. Need to look at the intersectoral linkages.
• shift in lending policies came first from the international financial institutions, although there are also factors.
• traditionally, there were state boards and local bodies controlling each sector. Now there are a whole heap of new institutions, because they measure water at all stages - a whole class of 'water auditors' and technical service providers have emerged. These technical service providers are also information-brokers for local people, informal financial intermediaries, etc. This means that relations between these old actors have changed. Contracts are an important means of structuring these new relations. Contracts were there before, but now there are far more. Tripartite contracts can make lines of responsibility very hard to work out, because the contracts are so complex. These also means a lot of water lawyers, with government agencies, MNCs, and investors in the water sector.
• Also a general trend in the water sector towards formalisation and codification. This often means a codification of existing power relations. Often a reluctance on the part of the state to question these power relations.
• Also a trend towards depoliticisation in development policy. Idea that decisions should be made on a technical basis.
• Along with decentralisation, a trend towards centralisation - moving certain decisions to the state level. First phase of neoliberalism rolls back state regulatory structures, second phase involves the creation of new institutions.
• An official mandate of sector reforms. There isn't a single reform agenda implemented in all locales. But on the whole, the terms of the discourse around water are changes.

ABHA SUR

• no discrimination between different kinds of science in STSS, and people don't look at society so much, just at 'science'
• CB Raman and Saha .... key scientists
• don't want to look at neutrality vs non-neutrality... science is inherently contradictory, because the society that it takes place within is inherently contradictory.
• science is creative, but because it is creative it is also ideological.
• science has a democratic potential, which motivates many scientists.
• am constantly aware of the possibilities of 'science for the people' within science - critique is of society, not of science
• looks at how science mediates knowledge production
• even in Raman and Saha (sp?) caste ideas come into the discourse on physics
• Saha chose to work on selectivity in nature. notion of levitation, why some atoms rise in the atmosphere. Very much about trying to understand, ' is nature discriminating too', because the society he was living in was so discriminatory. This came very much out of his social experience.
• second part of her work: discrimination and institutional bias. scientific institutions are mediated by social stratification.
• third: looks at scientific biographies: there is a complete denial of caste.

BANU SUBRAMANIAM: DNA and the politics of belonging

• training as an evolutionary biologist: halfway through phd realised that science was not objective.
• interest is in figuring out what it means to be an experimental biologist who also engages with the cultural issues
• interest in india has come up in the last 10 years with the rise of hindu nationalism
• had never heard the 'ID' persepective on evolution until she went to the US
• In india, western science is very much a part of the hindu nationalist project
• project looking at DNA migration studies
• DNA an increasingly central icon in questions about life
• 2001: study said that high castes in India were more european than low castes were.
• Dalits wanted to take caste discrimination to the UN World Conference againt Racism. Indian government wanted to stop them on the basis that caste is not race.
• Dalit Panthers and Black Panthers - attempts to create a global 'brotherhood' of blackness.
• 2006: Hindu activists challenged textbooks...some valid points, but also wanted to cut out discussion of caste and gender discrimination.
• Hindu nationalist groups in India are linked to the Hindu right in the US.
• Sengupta et al (2006): argued against the idea that upper castes in India were from outside India.
• There are many problems with DNA migration studies, most grounded in a lack of understanding of the sociological aspects. ... Interdisciplinary work needs to be done... DNA can tell us interesting things about the world, but we still need to work out what those things are.

DISCUSSION: Esha: I also share Abha's idea of a contradiction in science. Debate between Habermas and Marcuse - this question was centrally addressed. Habermas thought of science as something inherent in us. Marcuse saw contradictions within science and technology - they are both a source of freedom and of domination. Liberating science/technology can happen only if labour is also liberated. In STS we need to engage with previous debates. Ravi: congratulations on your avoidance of confusing social science terms! You can confuse any two things you want to. I need more proof of that. Abha: Raman said you could dismiss Bourne's theory without regard, because a diamond is the epitome of symmetry - it cannot possibly have any chaotic vibrations in it. Carol: how are these aesthetics linked to the caste issues - how is the idea of symmetry brahminical? Abha: classical music, etc, are very orderly. Dinesh: It depends on how you view it. The question of symmetry etc, depends on how you see it. Esha: Einstein also said he found E=MC2 very aesthetically pleasing. Abha: I am not bringing in the idea of 'brahminical' because of anything but CB Raman was a Brahmin. Ravi: All scientists are unscientific Abha: i don't make that distinction between scientific and unscientific - all science is constituted through culture, that is my point. Rene: you are the risk then that you are also positioned within a cultural context. This is Ravi's point. You too are influenced by this. Dinesh: Abha is not saying that noone else sees science culturally. Just that Raman did. Murali: should not link caste to music. Many different people have experimented with these. ????: what relation do you draw between Saha's caste status and his opposition to privatisation? Abha: in my work i do many things. One thing is to look at Saha's work in astrophysics and his caste. Another part of my work is to look at institutional bias - Saha was not just from a particular caste and class, but was also faithful to this background, critiquing nuclear power and privatisation and promoting people's science. So Saha's marginalisation was because of this. Also looks at how STS refuses to question caste and class and gender, refuses to centralise these categories...wittingly or unwittingly. Esha: Banu - why call this internalist? Banu: because of what i am interested in, my area of research. Esha: and also how the political economy for scientific research affects these issues? Eg. massive funding for mapping of the genome. Why do we want to do that without putting it in a historical context? Kavita: Priya... who are the winners and losers in the water reforms, what are the stakes? Dinesh: You talked about the hand-pumps being considered wasteful in this dialogue... but there are lots of studies that show that all 24/7 attempts at water are wasteful, especially given the state of India right now...so we should be thankful that we don't have 24/7 water. Are these arguments not part of the dialogue. Priya: one reason i didn't start off with privatisation is because this angle has a lot of attention - which is right in some senses, but there are also other aspects that need to be addressed. Eg. accounting changes that make it hard to move money from one sector to another. On Dinesh's point: this is a good point. There's a booklet from the World Bank on the 24/7 subject - argument made is that if you have 24/7 you will be forced to have a good distribution system - leakages will be detected faster, less chances of contamination, long-term costs will be less, although there will be some short-term costs implementing it. What is not recognised in this argument is that the costs cannot be met in most areas - eg. how can you replace-fix the distribution system in a whole city. Opposition in Dharwad, but not Hubli - because of groups there... protests on the basis of costs etc. Government response has been to claim that those opposing the 24/7 project have illegal connections. Dharward activists refused the house connections. But now there is no choice - you are either connected or you don't have water. similar experiences in Belguam. Now projects are very much underway. Dinesh: groundwater use? Priya: most people use groundwater for all non-cooking purposes, so groundwater use is fairly high. Initial argument for the 24/7 project meetings was that they would look at taking water from a variety of sources, but that is not happening. Rob: was just reading that they have a reversal of the 24/7 project in Goa because of leakages and getting rid of stand pipes and instead trying to give house supplies to every house that wants it. Priya: I don't know about the exact context in Goa, but in general group sources of water is being abolished in favour of individual supplies. The official supply is that group supplies are wasted, and there is no money coming in to support it. In terms of slums, this is linked to the whole idea of slum development... which is a much more complex issue. Idea is that slum-dwellers should have subsidised housing. But people forget that the slums are not static development - there will always be new waves of migrants to the slums, so there will always be a need for group sources of water. In rural areas the issue might be more about pilgrims/travellers needing handpumps. Dinesh: wouldn't it be good to decentralise water and other sectors, if people can then have control over them? Priya: This could be depriving people, especially latecomers, of water. Kavita: work in RSA... Right to Water. Priya: there is a particular trajectory... followed by state water boards in many places, not exactly privatisation but something like it. India - indirect support for the Right to Water in the Indian Constitution. A controversial point in Indian activism, since in many states it is still referred to as a 'need' not a 'right'. RSA case is interesting, although not fully applicable. Joy: on the issue of belonging, do you see parallels in other parts of the world? Banu: all kinds of communities use these arguments when in suits them...use DNA to determine belonging (when it suits them). Eg. Seminals/Native Americans. Joy: all of these are non-mainstream communities. Abha: but others are interested also, eg. genealogies are very popular. Earlier, in the US, people had very good ethnic databases on where slaves came from, because slaves from particular areas were seen as having certain skills. Later the histories of migration were lost, and slaves were seen as all 'blacks'. Interdisciplinary project taken up to re-learn this. Banu: Lembha - group in Africa - oral history was that they were Jewish ... DNA studies to look at it. Joy: but in the Indian state groups tried to use DNA to take a position of legitimacy, but most other groups use it more for curiosity or academia? Banu: the question of where you come from is important to people? Also other questions... like whether identity is about DNA or socially lived experience. Esha: DNA also used otherwise...eg. Watson's claims. How science is used... reinforces social hierarchies... goes against the idea of the enlightenment of progress.. Banu: but there are also counter-examples, where activist lay groups have gotten involved in the science, challenged the scientific establishment successfully Rob: but was the case that showed that upper castes are less indian good science? Banu: well, it was just preliminary. Too many conclusions taken from it. Looking at the different studies, there is a great degree of variations. Rob: weren't researchers aware of the social consequences of their research? What was their motivation? None of us see science as entirely pure... there are always answers that are hoped for... Banu: this was an international group - people from about 12 different studies. Dinesh: but there should be people to challenge this? Banu: but there have been debates, there have been disagreements. There are all these databases out there, being studied over. Abhu: i think the point of the study was to talk about the migratory history, to talk about the aryan migration, rather than castes. they were trying to map the routes of migration. Banu: it is never clear what people started off studying, they say something else at the end. Abhu: they refer to anthropological studies... measured claims... there is always the problem of reducing it to identity politics, of it being used. In this case Dalits took this and used it... Banu: part of my frustration is that there are all these claims being made... even if they make claims that are measured, the whole focus on the research Carol: anthropologists keep saying that you can't make these links between gene pools and language/ethnic groups... it is all constructed, it may have been totally different a couple of centuries ago Abha: i think we need to differentiate... race doesn't exist biologically, but racism is alive and kicking... mating patterns are not random. Differences exist, the question is what you make of them. We have to distinguish between majoritarian identity and minority identies. Kavita: here we are also entering another issue - if certain groups are asking for things - for identity, egovernance, land claims, etc, should it be given? Abha: and who are we to give? Kavita: yes! and also if these things are being given already, how can we introduce questions, so people don't just consume these services but also question them. Dinesh: and we need histories of the people, not just of the state. Abha: civil society needs to take a greater role in deciding what science is used. We cannot just generalised, we have to look at the particular issue and then decide. And this means throwing away some of the messiness. Dinesh: who is not an artist? This brings up an issue - who is not an artist?

AFTERNOON ROUNDTABLE

SAINATH SURYANARAYANAN: violence on the human and non-human other in technoscientific cultures

• looking at Viswanathan and Shiva, as well as more recent critiques.
• technoscientific cultures are grounded in a metaphysical violence towards the other, and so the main outcome is violent, with some beneficial outcomes.
• Latour argues that we have never been modern. Although there is a separation between nature, the other, and society, there is actually a proliferation of hybrid networks between these. so the notion of 'modern' is defunct. Problems with this: concepts do not have to be real to be important.
• ellul: technique is a vital part of the modern phenomenon. technique itself did not change, but the relationship between technique and society did...technique now undergirdles all...
• technoscience has become the new god, with efficiency as the all-important measure
• Heidegger - 'techne'
• Amit Prasad - should move towards a study of particular trajectories of technoscience to look for possibilities of non-violence
• adopting 'technique' to critique technoscience risks the possiblity of being subsumed into the same kind of violence. Need a new kind of language.

ROUNDTABLE:

CAROL: sociologist looking at some of these from a different angle. eg. looking at the IT industry in Bangalore with Vasavi. Vasavi's notes: Any talk about studying science and technology in India need to look at the post-colonial context - eg. the links between science, technology, and the state. Several programs that should be studied from a STS perspective: eg the Green Revolution. Question of import of knowledge...a certain kind of outsourcing, eg. science programs outsourced to india. Displacement of knowledge. Making of S&T 'heroes' and the implications of this. Carol's notes: S&T has come to have a strong ideological and symbolic power wrt nationalism and the state in India. S&T studies should therefore be discussed in relation to power structures in India - eg. caste, and the technocratic middle class (or even elite). There's an incredibly investment in technocratic solutions in India, and across the world, for development issues. If the term 'society' has fallen out of STS studies, in the Indian context (as elsewhere) it is imperative to put it back in. The Brahminical orientation of science is still clear, even in NIAS. Science gets used to legitimise all kinds of things - eg. Hindutva's talk about all of the ancient wonders of Hindu science. Another question: new move towards privatisation of science.

SAHANA UPPA (sp?): working with Carol on these issues. Working on media issues.

NG NARYASIMHAN (sp?): NIAS reorganised once the new director took over... larger units to subsume smaller groups that the centre previous worked on. Now 3 schools. Works in History and Philosophy of Science, focus is on biology. Biology occupies as strategic position between natural sciences and the social sciences. Looked at the debate around the double-helical model of DNA. Quite a lot of work done on the history of science in India. Emergence of molecular biophysics in India is one of the key events in Indian scientific history.

QUESTIONS:

Raahima: 1) I quit art history because theoretically it seemed to be feeding on itself - what are the other spaces for engaging with people? 2) How do we look at art and design? And including in a postcolonial context.. 3) Religion - as an artist my own work seems to open up doors to look at liberation theology within Islam... with Islam and with Hinduism, Buddhism ... these are not closed worlds, we need to have conversations with those worlds. SAI: We seem to be moving away from previous idea of art for art's sake, utilitarian purposes, etc. Can look at art as a vehicle for sublime truth... but we are shifting away now Rob: Idea of every human activity as art... every human being as an artist... all human activities are relevant as art. Does not necessarily mean that every human activity can be translated as art... Question of where art is found or where art is relevant - artists do have a fundamental role as some sort of transmitter - as storytellers - opening out and empowering people's views... which is why we like the idea of artists going into the 'dark places' of science. To be an artist is a full-time professional engagement, but the artist is also a storyteller. In response to ???'s third question: we should be thinking about that, how the relationship with religion can be looked into because it is so much a part of people's lives. ????: and for many people here art's function is served by religion. Dinesh: we see other people's 'religious art' as art, we see our own as [the sea in which we swim] Ashwin: the question of whether these things are art is kind of irrelevant to most people. These are questions whose answers are limited because the majority of people wouldn't understand the questions, let alone answers. Sai: i disagree. There is a difference between asking these questions implicitly or explicitly. Ashwin: questions about building a dam - don't ask is it art, just think about the practical aspects of it. Me: structures that surround us - we are also part of a particular technology/technological structures. Joy: Marxism and the idea of linear progress... Naryasimhan??: need to look at the context of scientific development. should not critique the enlightenment ahistorically...should look at the historical context of the enlightenment. Ashwin: but ahistoricism happens when a large part of the population begins to know about a period. Kavita: to rephrase the point - people often say that the masses are dumb, they can't think or analyse or look beyond the surface... but that is not necessarily the case. Another view is that everyday life involves a heap of complex decisions. We can see academic work as irrelevant and ivorytower, or as having some relevance... that question is what i'm interested in... Esha: science is often elitist... historicity is not always the answer... Narasimhan: i didn't invoke history as a normative concept, i just tried to put the critique of enlightenment into context. People never refer to the developments that preceded the enlightment theory of philosophy.

BRIEF SCUFFLE: is critiquing the enlightenment all that popular?

Kavita: presentations haven't been bashing the enlightenment - today's presentations have emphasised the contradictions, have said that there is space for dialogue and discussion...

Raahima: haraway - we should also talk about bodies.

Banu: interdisciplinarity - how to really do that? there aren't the spaces for it in institutions. Where are the spaces? They happen somewhere, and i would like to know more about it.

Narasimhan: there have been discussions about science, and about art. painting influenced scientific development - eg. Kepler.

Sai: question about subversion-intervention-fiction... science can be all of these things through measurement? Joy: no, that discussion was about art. Sai: but you (K) said that science could be all of those things? Kavita: it can be, it's full of contradictions. It's not just measurement.

Carol: when we give seminars, its to mixed audiences...its difficult to find the right language...people from natural sciences often have particular assumptions about how to go about asking questions (and answering them)

BRIEF SCUFFLE: about the role of language...

Carol: not just about language, also about 'what is knowledge' - not to say that natural scientists are wrong, just that people look at these issues differently.

Esha: the major challenge is pushing epistemological boundaries. how do you get those discussions happening? how to transform different disciplines?

Dinesh: are there instances of successful communication of the qualitative approach? Kavita: many. They key is neither trying to reduce others' complexity... Esha: helps when one person mediates between two disciplines...training in science and social science Dinesh: what joy is saying is that there is this whole mass of people who don't have the language to even consider these questions...

Raahima: so how does this interdisciplinarity translate into the political arena? how does it translate into interventions? Joy: take the example of Timbuktu. A small group in Andhra Pradesh. have done pretty remarkable things. most people are postgraduates, phds, etc. their activism is simple - they ask people what they want done, and if they can do it, they do it.