Coercion,Consent and Contestation: A Study of Changing Scientific Practices in India

Abstract

The advent of the customer–funder–policymaker as a prominent element in scientific practice since mid-1990s in India and intensifying thereafter seems to have forced scientists to (re)negotiate scientific boundaries and to do some of the delicate boundary work. The challenge for scientists is to not only bring science ‘close enough’ to politics and policy demonstrating social accountability, legitimacy and relevance but also avoid either science or politics overextending into the other’s territory—a prospect that is evidently disorienting and poses serious threats to idealised identities of science and the scientific community. Based on in-depth personal interviews with 68 agricultural biotechnologists in 24 scientific institutions in India, this article examines the factors responsible for the shift in the practice of science from being a curiosity-driven activity to contract obligation. Through the radical changes in science funding and policy-orientation in India since mid-1990s, scientists seem to be vigorously mapping out the cultural spaces for science and for their own identities as forming the scientific community. In this context, scientists included in the study are not actually in the process of (re)classifying a satisfactory version of ‘science’ and ‘policy’ through their work. Instead, they are engaged in multiple versions of actively negotiated science–policy boundaries, many of which seem to have different qualities and make different demands on them as researchers/scientists.