From anti-feudalism to sustainable development: The Kerala Peoples Science Movement

Abstract

People's science movements (PSMs) have become an important but little studied recent phenomenon in India. Originating in anticaste thinking of the 1950s, PSMs attempt to popularize nonmystical, scientific thinking, especially among India's rural poor. Many PSMs have evolved into significant centers of activism against social inequality and for environmental protection. The original and largest PSM in India is Kerala's KSSP, with more than 50,000 members. KSSP's history illustrates the changing focus of PSMs and shows that the organization has been able to influence many developments in Kerala over the past 30 years, including protection of the species-rich Silent Valley, improving the schools, promoting discussion of alternative plans for agriculture, industry, and electrical power, campaigning against unsafe drugs, fostering total literacy, installing high-efficiency cooking stoves, and conducting an innovative people's resource mapping campaign. When the 1996 Left Democratic Front Ministry decided to launch a people's campaign for local-level development planning, KSSP became a major mobilizing force for the campaign.In recent years, India has witnessed the rise of a number of people's science movements. These movements attempt to popularize science among ordinary people, especially in India's thousands of villages, through lectures, street drama, children's science magazines, and other mechanisms. People's science activists attempt to spread secular attitudes that undermine religious and communal passions such as those that erupted in 1992 with the right-wing Hindu destruction of the Ayodhya Mosque. Toward that end they encourage the adoption of Gandhian-based ideas of Indian self-reliance, independence from major power blocks, and local development initiatives.