Inside The Science Gallery Bengaluru With Rohini Nilekani And Jahnavi Phalkey
Govindraj Ethiraj speaks to Jahnavi Phalkey and Rohini Nilekani (RN) about the importance of enhancing public engagement with science
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GE: Rohini and Jahnavi, thank you so much for joining me. So we are going to talk about the Science Gallery in Bangalore which has been there for a while and there are some very interesting new exhibitions, but we will come to that in a moment. So let me try and understand a couple of things firstly from both of you.
Rohini, why is science important and particularly in the target group or audience that we are now focusing on, that the gallery is focusing on which is 15 to 30 and how does this concept of science mesh with what you see around or we see around in Bangalore that might be interesting and relevant to people who are not there and could be anywhere else in the world.
RN: First of all, thank you Govind for getting Jahnavi and me on this podcast. I think I came into the Science Gallery very happily on the invitation of Kiran Mazumdar who is the chair of the board and for me it was very important because although unfortunately I studied the liberal arts and wasn't exposed enough to science, maybe precisely because I wasn't exposed to enough science, I began to realise just how much in this century science matters, scientific enquiry matters; it meshes itself in every single aspect of our lives from morning to night of human life and human existence. And I think it is very critically important for Indian cities to have a space, open public space where people can go, the public can go and really understand everything they can about exactly how science meshes with their lives and especially today's emerging sciences, biotechnology, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, space exploration and so on. Nanotechnology— just everything fascinating and also science and society cannot be separated because most of the burning ethical issues in society come out of scientific exploration and technological application. So I think it is a very critical field.
GE: And can I ask you for some examples of that Rohini, both, one is when you say that there is a need for science, I mean is it something that you have seen or encountered in your own life that attracted you to this and the second is when you talk about these burning issues, what's an example that comes to mind?
RN: I mean clearly climate change right, because of or even the nuclear threat that seems to have receded in the public mind but is still as potent as ever. So like the most popular film in recent Hollywood times, Oppenheimer's life itself is a great example of that. What science unleashed through technology of nuclear weapons is something that people need to understand. When it comes to climate change, people need to understand the discovery of oil and how it was used and what it unwittingly did to the little planet. So understanding how science is developed and what technological applications emerge from it and it's both the good and bad it can do right… to create a critical thinking public on these issues.I think those are two examples.
GE: Right. And I'm going to come back on both the negative and the positive in a moment.
Jahnavi, tell us about your journey and I mean where you went and how it brought you to this particular project that you've now become so passionately involved in.
JP: Thank you Govind again for having me on the podcast. So you know like Rohini mentioned I also started in the liberal arts, in fact my first three degrees are in civics and politics, following which I moved to history of science, taking a plunge that I, I'm not entirely sure I knew what I was doing when I joined history of science, but here I am 24 years later, completely still in love with the subject. And again, like, you know, like Rohini mentioned already, I think even if I take my own parent discipline, if that's what one might even call it, because even in history of science, I've been very seriously thinking about science and the state, science and democracy, science and state formation, science and the administration of science, et cetera. You know, it's very difficult today to teach something as simple as electoral politics without understanding Cambridge Analytica, or what social media has done for electoral behaviour. And so in, if our crises today are sort of an information deluge, climate change, new gene technologies, artificial intelligence, everyday life is being altered in a rapid manner such that we hardly have a grasp, even when we are in the discipline itself. And so it's important, I think, that we have an informed public that can take informed decisions on things that matter to their everyday life.
Like, am I choosing the right therapies for myself? What is happening to my vote? Why should I vote? Or what, how does my lifestyle contribute to climate change? And what, how might I alter it? How might I alter my, you know, thinking and opinion in order to influence where the planet is going? And, you know, inevitably towards destruction is what we today find out. So it's for these reasons that I find myself now completely and passionately and, you know, kind of not just neck deep, I think I'm nose deep into the project. And it's an incredible opportunity.
So I was teaching, I was an academic when this opportunity came my way. And it wasn't an easy decision in that sense, you know, to tell myself, you know, I'm on this kind of predictable, I'm on this predictable path to a career in academia and to say that I'm now going to try to establish something from scratch. I have no doubt had incredible support. I don't think I could have imagined the kind of support that I have for the project, both from the Government of Karnataka, but also establishment patrons and Rohini has already mentioned Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Rohini herself, Kris Gopalakrishnan, together with the government have ensured that we are able to realise the kind of institution we all think is necessary for our times.
GE: So you talked about the history of science. So tell us more about the history of science. I mean, I wouldn't have thought of it. So why is history of science important to you? And it was I mean, why was it important to you and why is it important to us or it should be to us?
JP: Yeah. So historians of science, like other historians, study transformations in scientific thinking, scientific ideas, the practice of science, the funding of science, the research organisation, et cetera, and how effectively over time the scientific, the nature of scientific inquiry has changed. And I think if I were to boil it down to one sentence, what history of science offers is an insight into the processes of knowledge production. Be they in the laboratory, be they in the public domain, be they in administration, be they in geopolitics, we know about export controls and what that does to the possibility of doing research in other countries; for example, just after the Second World War, dual use technologies, especially nuclear, but also space meant that certain countries were able to do certain kinds of things and others had to in many ways do it guerrilla, right? Like or through what…. Yeah, smuggling things and et cetera.
So I think what history of science allows you to show is how science functions through various registers and gives you an insight into how that knowledge was produced, why it was produced and to what effect. And it has been interesting for me because when I was doing my first work, my first major work, which eventually turned into a book, I did not realise how much of my earlier learning in civics and politics have brought to the study of history of science.
So, you know, the state has remained kind of, you know, an important aspect of the work that I do. And I think the history of science is important more broadly, you know, more than sort of, you know, the fact that I really just love it, because if we need to understand the new kinds of knowledge, I mean, we've now been told that we live in a knowledge economy. So if that's where we are, if we are the inhabitants of a knowledge economy, then we need to know who, why, when, where this knowledge is produced and to what effect, because otherwise the decisions on our lives are going to be taken elsewhere.
And I think that's why we need to know more. What have we done at what cost?
GE: So let me converge for a moment and then come back. So a lot of this, what you're saying, Jahnavi, about the history of science, what Rohini was saying, for example, understanding the application of science, both the positive and the negative, is now in both your cases converging into a public space where you want young people to come and experience, see, including things like maybe voting machines which were built in Bangalore. So, of course, there is the significance and the symbolism of the city as well.
So Rohini, let me come to you here. Why a public space then? You know, Jahnavi says knowledge economy, which means we're all consuming digitally. We could be sitting anywhere, taking in all that knowledge. So what's the relevance of a public space?
RN: OK, I think the public space part of it is the most exciting because much of science is conducted in completely inaccessible spaces, right? There's a plane flying overhead by, in fact, ironically from HAL. So who is testing that? So let me just let that pass. Yeah. And I'm sure it's a fighter jet. It's a fighter jet. What do I know how they are produced? All I know is they go right over my bedroom at supersonic sort of noisy sounds.
OK. OK. Let me start again.
So the fact that it's a public space that we are creating is the most exciting for me because science is usually conducted behind closed walls. We don't know how science is developed in laboratories, in institutions. A lot of science today, unlike maybe in the past, is developed in private institutions. We don't even know what is happening, who's developing the algorithms of artificial intelligence that are going to decide my fate as a consumer, as a citizen. So to allow people to actually think of science as a cultural commons, and there's a wonderful book by Lewis Hyde, which I urge your listeners to look at called Common as Air, which looks at the history of intellectual property and how originally patents were actually meant to not to privatise intellectual property, but to protect it for the public so that others could build on top of it. So for me, it's the open public spaces that are important today because otherwise science is either captured by the bazaar totally or sometimes by the sarkar. I think it should be restored to the samaj spaces.
GE: OK, so if I were to ask you, Rohini, when you meet younger people, where do you see the gaps? So we've talked about, for example, let's say the appreciation of the history of science, which is, let's say for most people, a little more amorphous, but it all comes together. Obviously, when you see something, you say, OK, this is how this was made. These are maybe the people who invented it. This is the year it happened and the context in which it happened. So where do you see those gaps and how do you feel, in general, we should be addressing them and also why we should be addressing them at this point of time in history?
RN: Again, I do believe that there are not enough public spaces per se in India.
OK, there are just not places where young people can come, get inspired, learn something new outside their textbooks and outside the social media universe. And I think the Science Gallery Bengaluru is a very important part of creating those public spaces. We need more new and innovative museums for everything, the science of food to, you know, the performing arts, just everything. And this is just one small space that we are offering where the young can come, especially youth, OK. All citizens, of course, but especially young people to have their own space with Jahnavi dreams of, to have a laboratory to experiment, to collaborate, you know, to use their hands and their minds, work with other people to actually have blue sky thinking about the future. We need those kinds of public spaces, Govind, which are not all digital. We need physical spaces for people to walk into, to learn how to, first of all, develop a critical mind, a critical thinking, but also understand the diversity of human thought.
GE: And Jahnavi, now tell us about the way you envision this. I mean, you know, what were you when you were imagining what this place could be… And it's a very large space, as I can see.
How did you envision it, the size, the distribution of space, the concentration of some subjects, of course, the important part being that there are constantly new things happening. And all of this goes back to the same process of knowledge that you've talked about.
JP: So, you know, we are a part of an international network of galleries. We are six of us in the world right now. And Bangalore is an outlier in that the other five belong to universities and are primarily exhibition galleries. So in many ways, the expectation also of us was that we would take this model and replicate it. Very early on, I felt that this would somehow be needed. Early on, I felt that this would require some amount of rethinking for several reasons.
One is that this model works inside a university where there are professors and labs and constant seminars and a barrage of events, et cetera, that's happening and this nests very well as an exhibition gallery within a context where knowledge is on priority.
So what does it mean to create a similar space that brings artists and scholars together to create public engagement outside of the university and without losing the ethos that connects to the university, but also prioritises knowledge? And I think I would really like what Rohini said just now, which is, you know, that knowledge at the end of the day is a common good.
Knowledge is a public good. So if that is what informs your desire to put new research into the public domain to create a public life for research, so to speak, then how does one do it for an independent institution? So that was my starting point.
The other concern also was that the model started out in Dublin, which is much, much, much smaller when compared with, say, even London or Bangalore, definitely. And Science Gallery Dublin did not have competitors in quite the same way as even London has or Bangalore will have. Right. And so how does one create an institution that also speaks to the context?
So if you ask me what were the three problems, so to speak, and this is, of course, clear to me in hindsight, like it's never clear to you as you're working your way through it. So I found my North Star constellation in three words, science, culture, and experiment. So instead of saying science as natural sciences alone, it's the human, social and natural sciences; instead of saying art alone, which is equally reified and distant from everyday life, culture, which allows for cultural conversation that also again, Rohini spoke about. And then those three words then allowed me to say what were the problems these words or this constellation was allowing us to solve.
And the first is as follows. So if you look at museums as public institutions for knowledge, which were the first ones, right, like the first institutions, the first public institutions for knowledge, there the object that was being studied, the person who was studying it and the public were in the same space. And so in a sense, they had a relationship with each other. To put it sort of in, to put it very quickly, the public knew what was being researched and who was the researcher. Now, with the changing nature of science, that relationship is lost. So is there value in reconstituting that relationship in a manner relevant to today? Because obviously, you know, science has become bigger. Science is now behind walls. Science, you know, is well, the nature of inquiry is siloed. It's much, much, much more deeper rather than sort of running on bread/breath. It's no longer tabletop, so on and so forth. So if there is value in reconstituting that relationship, then how should we do it? So that was the first question.
The second question that, you know, or the second problem that that I thought we should solve is that if you look at—-what now Rohini has heard me say, I think more than multiple times in the last five, six years—is that even in the early 20th century, which is when I think the voice of Indian science was the voice of Indian science was its most confident. We even had a science Nobel laureate in the early half of the 20th century. At that point in time, there were spaces like public labs. So the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science, for example, was a place where CV Raman, who was an accountant otherwise, could come, pay a small bench fee and conduct experiments, which he was incredibly passionate about, walking him towards eventually the Nobel Prize. Are there spaces like that today that would allow or is there value in creating a space that would allow someone who's deeply passionate about an idea to the extent that they will actually take it to a point where it can then go where it belongs?
Because today, of course, you cannot complete an experiment in quite the same way as you could 100 years ago. But you can certainly fine tune that question to the point where it can be taken to a university then to be finished or to an incubator to be finished or to an art gallery to be exhibited or to be taken home to be implemented. And so is there a space that allows passionate inquiry of that kind? And that's the second problem we'd like to solve as a result of which we what we've pioneered in Bangalore is a public lab complex with six experimental spaces that Rohini already alluded to, which will allow people to bring in ideas that are robust enough to be developed with mentorship, with resources to then be able to take them where they belong. Because today, it's the walls that Rohini spoke about, the silos that we all see, you know, I mean, the fact that both Rohini and I had to mention the fact that we are both students of the liberal arts who found our way to this, right?
In India, those doors are closed. Once you walk on, walk out on science, so to speak, there's no return journey allowed. And I think that needs to break down. That needs to break down because the complexity of the problems we confront today calls on us to be in conversation with people across disciplines.
GE: And you mentioned C.V. Raman being an accountant, is that, did I hear you correctly?
JP: Yes. For the first 10 years of his professional life, he was with the Indian Audits and Account services. And in the evening and in the morning, he would go to the lab and do his work. I never tire of telling this story. I'm so excited that, you know, many people don't know it and they must know it.They must know it.
GE: And this was in Bangalore, and you said the labs were in Bangalore, which are not there now?
JP:In Calcutta.
GE: But and these are institutions or spaces which existed then, but do not exist now, is that what you say?
JP: That's true.
GE: That's OK. Rohini, can I come back to you? So, you know, we've talked about basic science. Now, when I think, I mean, all of us think of, let's say science, we think of engineers and when we think of engineers, we usually think of information technology and IT and so on and so forth.
So there is, I guess, a perception problem from the outside. But I guess there is an objective problem, if it's a problem, from the inside. So which is that not enough people, I mean, some people surely are, but not enough people are following basic science as a career and so on.
And that's something that we discuss a lot in India as an issue as well. How do you see this from your vantage point? That's one. And secondly, do you see institutions like this addressing it?
RN: I mean, I don't think we can put so much of the burden on the Science Gallery. But very clearly, we need more institutions that get people into basic science, even theoretical physics, though, you know, it's not like… because science is the basis of all technology. How will technology develop without science? It's not possible. Information technology, how will it develop? So I think encouraging people to study, young people to study basic sciences and creating a space where— I love what Janhavi said, that it should be, you know, porous spaces. You should be able to study music and mathematics. You should be able to study literature and physics. I mean, I don't see why there should be walls like that. The oldest universities, which actually sprang so much of today's, you know, even modernity came from universities that were not at all siloed, that allowed interdisciplinary thinking. So that's the first thing.
So to divide us, to divide our spheres of knowledge into science and non-science is nonsense, actually. So we have to get that back. And, you know, if we don't do that, you know, I'll always love, I always loved the quote of Martin Luther King, who said that our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. And I think today, when we literally can burn up our planet in the next 30 years, I think it's time to open up people's minds to learning science and philosophy together. So it's very, very important at this juncture.
GE: So if I can digress for a moment, Jahnavi, so, you know, I mean, of course, we have colleges and institutions which are multidisciplinary. But obviously, the way they maybe you go into an engineering college and stick to engineering. At best, you will see a confluence of science and arts. So is that is that something that you feel? I don't I'm not saying the museum or the Science Gallery needs to address it. But what do you think about this theme in general? How do we as a policy response, perhaps, or a policy issue, how do we address it?
JP: Yeah. So you're right. You know, engineers in India study with engineers, architects with architects, lawyers with lawyers, doctors with doctors, so on and so forth. Like at most, you see some mixture, as you very rightly said, of natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences in colleges, undergraduate level. And that has consequences, right? Like, so let me just sort of break it down into just everyday life. So no engineer has ever been beaten down by a historian. You know, when between the ages of, say, roughly 17 and 25, your confidence is generally the highest, right? Like you think you know everything or you or you, you're at least able to know everything, even if not. I mean, some of us are more humble, but, you know, that's the age when everything is possible. Everything is new in front of you. And you're studying with people who are studying the same thing. You're not surrounded by people who are reading or doing anything different to you. You know, I mean, it would be just think of it, right?
Like if here's the engineer who's kind of, you know, waxing eloquent about technocratic solutions to something or the other and walks in a violinist or walks in a physicist or walks in an architect and basically just question because between the ages of 17 and 25, I mean, you know, a young person your age question like, why? Why do you think you can do that? Or even socialising with them, going out, you know, to to drink whatever it is, you know, chai or whatever else, you know, and fighting over, you know, something or the other in a dorm, living together, talking to each other, the kinds of questions you would end up asking would unsettle the assumptions of various disciplines. And those conversations are likely to produce less shrunken imaginations in every kind of profession. And that I think that's the thing. I mean, we have very few universities, so to speak, in the broadest sense in India, right? We have institutions of higher learning and we have some incredibly good ones. I mean, the world, well, much of American academia survives on the incredible training that some of our not just engineers, but also other kinds of professionals get, right? Like and now increasingly Germany as well. So clearly we have smart young people, but also very, very good institutions. But they just do not. They're siloed. That's it. They have walls. And I think those have to come down. An architect should have to be growing up with a civil engineer minimum. And that's a utilitarian conversation. But they should be talking to physicists. They should be talking to dancers. They you know, it's just the mixed…. I mean, like, you know, to my mind, a camp, like just a camp where, the 17 to 25 year olds just meet each other and question each other and beat each other up, you know…But no, you don't know it. I know it; changes how they will talk to each other going forward.
GE: Rohini, you talked about critical thinking, and I want to, as we conclude shortly, come back to that. So one of the objectives of spaces like this and institutions and bodies like this is to foster that with some kind of, let's say, drive through the process of focus on basic science, which is, I guess, what the specific objective here is. So you talked about, you know, the negative and the positive when we look at, you know… science in itself, what are some of these things that bother you the most? And on the other side, maybe give you optimism and hope.
RN: So, you know, I've been associated with many think tanks now in India. And, you know, we all realise whether it's, you know, institutions looking at the environmental sciences or looking at public policy that you need interdisciplinarity to approach any complex social problem. You have to come at it from several angles. And we are finding it so hard. Everyone knows this, that you need an interdisciplinary approach. But because of how people have been trained, it is very, very, very hard later to superimpose the interdisciplinarity you need. And you can see the effect of that everywhere on the streets of India. If you look at, you know, what you need in public design, for example, like Janavi said, you need civil engineers, architects. You need artists. You need, you know, you know, Nandan, my husband calls himself a plumber. You really need plumbers to come and meet artists to get public design right, so that the citizens don't have to spend their lives navigating the basics and can move on to other things in life. So for me, that has become something that we should all be thinking about in the public space. So that's one. About how do we create interdisciplinary mindsets from the get go as early on as we can. That's that's what critical thinking comprises of.
And secondly, because today's problems are incredibly difficult to solve. They can't be solved by narrow thinking. Take anything, take health, just take health. Simple issues of health that are arising after the pandemic. We have seen our mental health, for example, is in itself becoming a pandemic, a silent pandemic. How are you going to address it? You can't address it purely from, you know, studying medicine. It's a societal issue. So bringing these things together, the possibilities are endless if you can do that, right? Because human innovation can be unleashed in collaboration. So that's one.
And I think in India, especially Govind, it's a very faith based society. And I'm all for faith. I'm all for spiritualism. But when that faith closes its eyes and becomes blind, then we have to worry about how a society will become in the future. How will it solve its emergent problems? So I think all the more reason for people to be allowed to question themselves without judgement and with optimism. I think these are the issues we squarely have to face in India.
GE: Okay, so I have a couple of questions now, looking slightly ahead, perhaps.
Jahnavi, let me begin with you. If someone wants to you know, the next CV. Raman, we don't know if he or she will be, you know, in Bangalore right now, but what to, you know, go and experiment, try out some ideas. How do they reach you?
JP: So we are in Bangalore, of course, and apart from that, we are reachable both online and in person. And they can reach out to us to seek mentorship, to attend our events and master classes and workshops and summer schools and public lectures and tutorials and student learning experiences. So my team has created a range of learning resources, some of which are online. So we've also just piloted our online open courseware, suggesting multi-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinarity. We also create activity handbooks for younger people to just, you know, and this is all available thanks to the incredible support from the Government of Karnataka and from our establishment patrons, of which Rohini is one. All of this is freely accessible, at no fee to anyone who wants to access. And they can, you know, use our activity handbooks, use our exhibition in a box, use our online open courseware or come to Bangalore, visit us. So, just an idea and my fingers crossed.
We have six labs, two of which are fully funded, and we are working now on getting the other four fully funded. And, you know, we will launch them. Fingers crossed.
GE: So, and the same question I'm going to first put to you and then come to Rohini as well. So do you see this going to other cities in India? Maybe offshoot satellites, larger spaces?
JP: So our exhibitions are beginning to travel. We've actually had requests for our exhibitions to be taken to other cities at no cost to us, which is quite a surprise. And it's actually quite fabulous. And in fact, yes, I think what we want to do is develop methods that can be taken up by people such that they can do what we do on their premises, because this needs to be done physically, sort of managed and engaged with and negotiated where it is.
Interdisciplinarity, critical thinking, as Rohini mentioned, coming together of ideas and coming together of people and practices cannot sort of be designed from elsewhere. And therefore, I think what we can do and what we are trying our best to do is to develop those methods which people can take and do what they need to do where they are.
GE: Right, Rohini, so you let me come back to spaces of which science and the Science Gallery is one part. I know that you are very passionate about public spaces, and this is not your first, let's say, initiative in Bangalore city itself. Tell us about why others should be thinking similarly and also why you are so passionate about this particular aspect of, let's say, cultural progress.
RN: Yeah, I think today, just imagine if several governments had not set up CERN and the Internet had not developed as a public space. Actually, I don't think we would be on this call even. So, first of all, we need much more public funding from the state into research, into creating the spaces, like Jahnavi said, where the next CV Raman will emerge. But even just public spaces for all sorts of things, whether it's arts and culture or even children's exploratoriums, public parks, you know, so I think that is essential.
First, the state to fund more. But in a state, in a country like India, there are so many priorities. So there's just that much the state can do, which means that the same kind of science and technologies that allowed many people in India to acquire immense wealth, which were publicly funded spaces like the Internet, right? Like without GPS, without India's entire public digital infrastructure, how would innovation happen? How would so much wealth creation happen?
So now it's time for those wealthy to give forward and create more public infrastructure for the rest to thrive. And I think that's why it's so important for philanthropy to play a much stronger role in building out India's science institutions, many of which still need to be built.
And not everything can be in Bengaluru. It has to spread out across the country. So I hope others will join us. I hope the younger wealthy who don't necessarily have to worry about, you know, like the old industrial families, about conserving capital in their families, I hope they open up their minds and begin to create more spaces, like the Science Gallery in Bengaluru, which we have. First of all, it needs much more funding coming into it, fulfill its vision and mission. But also other cities, tier two and tier three places, can have very small centres where young people can come.
Today, Govind, we have 50% of our population below the age of 25. In 30 years, we are going to start getting very old, and we are going to have very different problems. These 30 years are extremely critical. And I think today's wealthy need to come forward to help create the spaces where we can collaborate to do some futuristic thinking about where India is going to be.
