KICS Sharing Session – 42
Science and Society: A Contemporary Perspective
Speaker: Prof. Deepak Kumar
Date and Time: October 6, 2018, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Venue: CWS Conference Hall, 12-13-438, Street No. 1, Tarnaka, Secunderabad - 500017
This talk proposes to explore the dynamics of the science-society relationship in the context of contemporary India. As a background, it will begin with some focus on what had happened during the colonial times, especially the period of transition from dependence to independence. Modern science no doubt had come as part of the colonial baggage and was gradually accepted by the growing middle class. But this was not done without certain valid contestations. These debates informed and influenced the Indian national movement. It had outstanding participants like Gandhi, Tagore, Saha, Visvesvaraya, Raman and Nehru. Their ideas gradually led to a kind of development discourse which remains valid even today.
What were the contours of this discourse? The inner tensions were amply reflected in the planning process which independent India had enthusiastically accepted. Science and technology had become almost synonymous with modernisation and development. What were its strength and weaknesses? Notwithstanding certain fault lines, the foundations of a new India were laid. New institutions were created, new sub-disciplines emerged and the role of scientists like S.S. Bhatnagar, P. Mahalanobis, Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, B. P. Pal deserve notice at par with politicians and reformers of the time. The year 1967 marks a watershed, and as the political fortunes fluctuated, educational institutions began to decline. The successive governments responded by creating new institutions. The revolutionary changes in information and other technologies brought some prosperity as well as fresh challenges. The talk will end with a tentative assessment of these changes by the end of the twentieth century, the consequences of which are too close to be properly assessed.
Prof. Deepak Kumar has worked and published on different aspects of science, society and government links in the context of colonial India during the last four decades. On retirement from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), he is currently an Honorary Professor at the University of Hyderabad. His publications include Science and the Raj: A Study of British India (OUP, 2006) and The Trishanku Nation: Memory, Self and Society in Contemporary India (OUP, 2016).
Sharing session is one of the regular activities of Knowledge In Civil Society (KICS) trust. These are organised around contemporary themes relevant to KICS work as an exercise of learning from each other. The objective is to deepen our shared understanding of the theme and to appreciate the key cross linkages, especially in the realm of Science, Technology & Society. You can find a list of previous sharing sessions here.
KICS Sharing Session #39 Challenges in the Socio-Environmental Regulatory Governance of Thermal Power Plants in India (with specific reference to TPPs in Telangana)
Speaker: Meera Sanghamitra
Date and Time: October 21, 2017, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Venue: CWS Conference Hall, 12-13-438, Street No. 1, Tarnaka, Secunderabad - 500017
Coal-Fired Thermal Power Plants (TPPs) contribute a lion’s share to the installed power capacity of this country, contributing about 76% of the total electricity produced. Over the decades, the social and environmental impacts and implications of these plants have been a major cause of concern, both to the government and civil society. The past two decades, also witnessed the slow evolution of a legal and regulatory regime that governs these plants. While on the one hand, climate change and cheaper availability of renewable energy sources are pushing governments and project proponents to re-consider prioritizing thermal plants, we are still, as a country, grappling with the socio-environmental costs of numerous TPPs that have come up in the past decades as well as quite a few plants that are in the offing. At the heart of this, lies the role of the regulatory institutions that have a mandate to ensure compliance with law, protection of environment and rights of affected communities.
The Speaker would like to share her preliminary findings, questions and concerns on this aspect, based on her work in the past 9 months, with specific reference to the social and environmental regulatory processes of Bhadradri, Yadadri, Ramagundam and Kothagudem TPPs in Telangana. She would like to present the status of regulatory governance with regard to some of these projects and thereby raise questions about the violations and gaps in the regulatory mechanisms. This is based on her analysis of relevant documents and discussions with sector actors, civil society activists and field visits. Some of the key issues that would be covered include environmental impact assessments and monitoring, environmental clearance, land acquisition and rehabilitation, covering the entire project life including planning, construction and operation.
The sharing session will begin with a presentation of key highlights and status of regulatory governance with regard to the above projects and thereby raise both specific and larger questions about the violations and gaps in the regulatory mechanisms that merit review. Along with sharing some of her own suggestions to improve and strengthen the regulatory mechanism, to ensure greater compliance on the social and environmental aspects of TPPs, the speaker shall also invite feedback and inputs from the participants to fortify the regulatory mechanisms as well as informed participation of civil society.
Meera Sanghamitra was trained as a lawyer in Hyderabad and has had an abiding interest in environmental and social justice issues since college years, when, along with a few other friends, she co-founded a small group called Grassroots. Between March 2008 -June, 2016, she has been associated and travelling with activist Medha Patkar and was involved full time with the Narmada Bachao Andolan – understanding and engaging on an everyday basis with the democratic struggle of thousands of oustees for decentralized development; right to land, livelihood, rehabilitation, environmental justice; touching at multiple levels, the interface of The People, The State, The Society. She has also been involved with various activities of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) during this entire period, in different capacities, including as a National Organizer and National Convenor. As she continues to be part of NAPM, she is also presently working as an independent researcher on the social and environmental regulatory aspects of Thermal Power Plants in Telangana, as a Girish Sant Memorial Fellow-2017 (co-ordinated by the Prayas Energy Group).
Sharing session is one of the regular activities of Knowledge In Civil Society (KICS) trust. These are organised around contemporary themes relevant to KICS work as an exercise of learning from each other. The objective is to deepen our shared understanding of the theme and to appreciate the key cross linkages, especially in the realm of Science, Technology & Society. You can find a list of previous sharing sessions here.
Chitra Krishnan was trained as a civil engineer at IIT Madras following which she worked on water resource issues in rural Kerala before pursuing her Master’s in Environmental Engineering in USA. Her working stints in different rural contexts and an organic farm in the USA influenced her markedly in her research quests. She completed her PhD from IIT Delhi on the traditional irrigation system of South India (tanks and anicuts). Her research publications include “The State and Drought: Villagers’ Experiences” and “Irrigation Infrastructure: The Case of the Tungabhadra River”. She is currently practising dryland horticulture in Tumkur district, Karnataka and is involved in research studies looking at design and implementation issues of green infrastructure.
Sharing Session – 37
Hyderabad: Anatomy Of The Urban Flood
Speaker: Anant Maringanti
Date and Time: November 5, 2016, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Venue: CWS Conference Hall, 12-13-438,
Street No. 1, Tarnaka, Secunderabad - 500017
For nearly two decades now, Hyderabad has seen unplanned, tremendous growth in built up area. This has seriously disrupted storm water drains, and tremendously increased surface runoff. This violation of urban development norms is responsible for flooding in several points across the city.
The fault lies in forgetting our agricultural past and ignoring climate change. It took us centuries to develop the complex systems of values assigned to lands in the agrarian settlement. These values are based on soil conditions, gradient, location relative to other geographic and geological features such as ground water, surface water, drainage patterns etc. Urbanisation has altered this agrarian imprint with new logics of efficiency and economy of service delivery. New logics of revenue categories, new processes of record maintenance, reservation of land parcels for new purposes and installation of new infrastructure have erased the agrarian birthmarks of land.
With increasing pressure for land monetisation, governments and public utilities are vying with each other to capture and convert land parcels to new uses. Ridge systems, stream paths, accumulation points in the valleys — which used to play critical roles in managing precipitation and drainage — have been flattened.
In this sharing session, the speaker will discuss the untold story of urban floods and explain the need to re-centre our policy and to re-train our engineers into acknowledging our agrarian past. Urbanisation needs to be managed with careful observation, data gathering over long periods of time, modelling the behaviour of nature in the altered context. The speaker will elaborate the ways to review and revise revenue laws and rules that govern land categories and shape land use change.
Anant Maringanti is a geographer with a PhD from University of Minnesota and has taught graduate courses at the National University of Singapore and University of Hyderabad. His research and teaching interests centre on questions of urbanization and globalization from the South Asian vantage point. He is currently the director of Hyderabad Urban Lab, a multi disciplinary research programme run by the Right to the City Foundation. He has widely published in national and international academic journals on social movements, politics of development and urbanization.
Sharing Session – 36
The Andaman & Nicobar Islands: an island journey
Speaker: Pankaj Sekhsaria
Date and Time: June 18, 2016, 0400 – 0600 PM
Venue: CWS Conference Hall, 12-13-438, Street No. 1,
Tarnaka, Secunderabad - 500017
Sharing session is one of the regular activities of Knowledge In Civil Society trust (KICS, www.kicsforum.net). These are organised around contemporary themes relevant to KICS work as an exercise of learning from each other. The objective is to deepen our shared understanding of the theme and to appreciate the key cross linkages, especially in the realm of Science, Technology & Society.
It is a little more than two decades since the speaker first visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and has had the great opportunity of travelling extensively in the islands, right from the north in Diglipur to the extreme south - to Indira Point on Great Nicobar Island.
Pankaj has had a number of incredible experiences as well - many exhilarating and humbling hours watching Green sea, leatherback and Olive ridley turtles nest on remote uninhabited islands; photographing the endemic Nicobari megapode build up its nesting mound; descending into deep dark caves to see nesting Edible nest swiftlets; swimming and snorkelling in the sparkling waters - researching and writing on this spectacular diversity and beauty and the threats and challenges it faces; seeing the devastation caused in the earthquake and tsunami of 2004 and getting involved in advocacy and litigation in the interests of the fragile ecology and the indigenous peoples of the islands.
This sharing session will be the story of two parallel journeys – one is of the geology, ecology and history of the islands; the other is Pankaj’s personal journey of travelling and discovering the islands, the most recent step of which was the writing of his debut novel, The Last Wave, a story that is deeply embedded in the ecology, people and history of the islands. The session will begin with a slide presentation on the A&N islands, include readings from the book itself and will be followed by a Q&A session.
Pankaj Sekhsaria is a member of the environmental action group, Kalpavriksh, where he works on issues of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and also edits the bi-monthly newsletter, the Protected Area Update. 
He is a freelance journalist, photographer and author, most recently, of The Last Wave – an island novel, a story based in the Andaman Islands. He has authored/edited three other, non-fiction books, two of which are based in the A&N Islands.
He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the Pune University in 1993 and followed this with a Master’s Degree in Mass Communication from the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, in 1998. He has just finished his doctoral work in Science and Technology Studies (STS) from Maastricht University, Netherlands. Titled ‘Enculturing Innovation – Indian engagements with nanotechnology’, his thesis looks at the ideas and the practices of innovation within nano-science and technology laboratories in India and explores the societal and cultural influences on research and on innovation inside the laboratory.
Please register for this session by contacting us (email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , phone: +91-87905 35613).
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Sharing Sessions Article Count: 41
Studies & Papers Article Count: 4
Workshop Article Count: 7
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