Books

ATOMIC STATE: Big Science in Twentieth Century India by Jahnavi Phalkey. Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2013.

ON 18 May 1974, as Buddha smiled for the ‘first time’, India joined a select group of nations to have successfully tested an atomic bomb. Using this landmark as a vantage point, the history of nuclear physics in India was telescoped as the culminating in the explosion of the nuclear bomb. The central theme that runs through Phalkey’s history of nuclear physics in India urges us to refrain from seeing the testing of the nuclear bomb as an inevitable outcome of the history of nuclear physics in India. She attempts a historiography of nuclear physics which argues for a more complicated reading of this history, suggesting that nuclear physics in India had the option to take paths other than the one it eventually took.

To comprehend the various crossroads that dotted the history of nuclear physics in India, the author asks us to plot the historical trajectory from the 1930s rather than 1945, the year when the establishment of India’s first fully dedicated nuclear research establishment, namely the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), coincided with the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the ensuing narrative, Phalkey forces us to recognize that the historical trajectory of nuclear physics in the country was not punctured with intended consequences, but was instead the result of a mix of imperatives of the new nation state, nuclear scientists and politicians, and the changes that were taking place in international relations and global politics in the decade following the end of the second World War. In terms of selecting themes, Phalkey centres her narrative on the various historical actors of the period but also retains focus on the primary locale of scientific practice, the laboratory.

The 1930s Indian scientists headed to foreign universities and laboratories to study and research on what was then considered the frontiers of science, namely nuclear physics, prominent among them being R.S. Krishnan and B.D. Nagchoudhuri. Interestingly, two major figures of the scientific community were instrumental in sending the above two abroad, C.V. Raman and Meghnad Saha. Both Raman and Saha had by then realized that science had just gone ‘nuclear’ and that they needed to keep abreast of new developments. But this was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. The effort to build a bomb also cast a shroud of secrecy around nuclear research, especially equipment needed for conducting experiments. With Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar assuming leadership and command over industrial and scientific research and Homi Bhabha establishing the TIFR in 1945, the trajectory of nuclear physics took a new turn.

Shah, as member of the National Planning Committee (NPC) chaired by Nehru, had already convinced an influential section of the nationalist elite of the merits of the science-led development and the positive role that both science and scientist should play in the growth of the nation. Saha, Bhatnagar and Bhabha, the most important figures in Indian science at the time of independence, managed to foreground science as solution to the problems of the Indian masses. This contract that science comes to make with the newly independent nation state is crucial. Arguably, it was this contract between science and state that guaranteed state funding, priority and exceptionalism to nuclear physics in independent India.

An important concern flagged in the book foregrounds the diverse views within India’s scientific community on the issue of the organization of nuclear research. Even the quartet of Raman, Saha, Bhatnagar and Bhabha differed on this crucial issue. Bhabha managed to convince both Bhatnagar and Saha about the need for concentrating on one particular facility for the conduct of ‘nuclear’ research and that the state should be mobilized to support this particular facility which would be the fulcrum of the nuclear research in the whole country. This particular model was not without parallels internationally and neatly fitted into Bhatnagar’s plans for a setting up ‘National Laboratories’. Raman and R.S. Krishnan differed on this and subsequently were not allowed to set up a nuclear research facility at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.

This was a significant development for two reasons. First, Raman and Krishnan, with this decision were excluded from the state programme and planning of nuclear physics, though Krishnan was offered a position at the TIFR which he refused. Second, this move indicated two policy frameworks which would dominate the organization of science research in independent India. Cutting edge research on science was to be moved out of the university laboratories into speciality ‘National Research Laboratories’ and the research in science and the expansion of research facilities, especially in nuclear physics, would become an important part of state policy of the newly freed country. More importantly, this move also signalled the possible path that nuclear physics would subsequently take in India.

It is in this context that Homi Bhabha emerged as the most important figure in nuclear physics. Bhabha’s ideas on the centralization of nuclear research and the organization of nuclear research were congruent with both Bhatnagar’s ideas of national laboratories and Nehru’s ideas of centralized national planning directing the commanding heights of the economy. More crucially, Bhabha convinced Nehru – who was aware of the fact that nuclear research was at the most cutting edge stage of science across the world – to confer national importance upon nuclear physics. This firmly placed Bhabha as the undisputed scientist-leader among the nuclear physics community in India; his becoming the first Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy, which was directly under the Prime Minister, is indeed a marker of how powerful he became and the influence he wielded on Nehru concerning ‘nuclear’ matters.

Bhabha’s ascent as the undisputed leader of the nuclear research had some serious consequences for the future of research on nuclear physics in India. Under his leadership, nuclear energy was identified to be a key area where the state would focus its monetary and professional energy. Nuclear energy was going to be nuclear physics’ way of serving the new nation and from 1948 onwards state funding of nuclear research was directed towards the construction of a reactor, also known as a ‘pile’. This particular research direction shut off Meghnand Saha’s research group in Calcutta, now organized in the form of the Institute of Nuclear Physics. Saha himself argued, not for a reactor but rather for directing research in nuclear physics to feed into the nascent field of nuclear medicine. This shift in policy was translated into the shift from cyclotron building towards gearing research groups for creating the ‘pile’.

Phalkey considers Cold War politics as an important determinant of the trajectory nuclear physics took, but unfortunately this theme is not dealt with in depth that one would have liked to see. The decision to obtain the model for a reactor from Canada rather than Britain or France, two countries with whom the nuclear physics community had long, well established fraternal links, was a decision laced with considerations of Cold War politics. The American strategic establishment was wary of India’s nuclear programme obtaining Anglo-French help as many of the nuclear scientists among the Anglo French community were politically aligned to the left. One would have like to get a closer look at the various negotiations that India had to undertake to obtain the model of the nuclear reactor.

The strength of the book lies in the author’s ability to marshal a wide variety of archival material, much of it previously unexplored, to present a factual and extremely detailed picture of the emergence and trajectory of research in nuclear physics in India. Phalkey brings before us a history which documents in detail the various contestations and competitiveness between laboratories, the politics of scientists enjoying proximity to the power dispensation to ensure greater importance to their research agendas, and the contingencies that are an important part of any history.

The shifting of research in big science out of the universities into specialized research facilities was not restricted to nuclear physics alone but was true for sciences in general. Nuclear physics research, in fact, couldn’t be fully established in universities, except to a limited extent in Calcutta. Phalkey cites space and a funding crunch as important impediments. But I think that the question was more ideological; the universities were considered structurally cumbersome and hence ill-suited for research which would be required for a newly independent nation. Given her access to a wide variety of materials, ranging from rare photographs to oral interviews, one would have liked Phalkey to delve deeper into the reasons for this shift and the kind of implication it would have on the future of nuclear physics in India.

Though the title rather emphatically suggests the dominance of the nuclear agenda in planning for the development of the new nation, this may well be misleading because surely it was not possible to argue for an ‘atomic state’ even in the heyday of the Nehruvian era. Nehru personally took an interest in nuclear energy, no doubt, but the state had its hands full with other agendas that came naturally to preoccupy a new nation state. The book provides a wide view of the history India’s nuclear physics involving historical actors, laboratory practices and the politics of international relations which come into play in shaping the trajectory of research in nuclear physics in India. Alongside the historians of science in India, this book should interest students who want to specifically understand history of the early years of nuclear physics in India and its relationship with the process of state formation. The attempt to disentangle the history of nuclear physics from the explosion of the atom bomb in 1974 is a major contribution of this book. But, is it possible to separate them?

Om Prasad

Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

 

INDIA RURAL DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2012-13. IDFC Rural Development Network. Orient BlackSwan, Delhi, 2013.

AFTER decades of neglect, the rural seems to be deigned worthy of attention and a report on the state of development in rural India, commissioned by the Ministry of Rural Development, has been recently released. The report, prepared by a team from Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (IDFC) and with contributions and support from IRMA, CESS and IGIDR, is a comprehensive overview of select sectors and programmes in rural India and, despite the tremendous heterogeneity across the nation, manages to capture and represent some key conditions. These include flagging trends such as the blurring of rural and urban boundaries, the growth of marginal cultivators who own or cultivate less than five hectares of land and who constitute the majority of cultivators, the onerous role of the panchayats, some factors that account for the failure of government programmes, the inadequacy of infrastructure especially in terms of roads, schools, sanitation facilities, hospitals etc, and challenges in the functioning of the UPA’s flagship programme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREG). The culling together of a mass of data (provided as a special supplement in a CD) related to rural India is also a valuable source for further research and policy.

While the report is comprehensive in terms of the focus on infrastructural issues there are several issues that still need to be addressed. And, if as the minister for rural development indicates in his introductory note, the key challenge is to ‘create productive livelihoods, while protecting natural resources’ (foreword), then there is need to unpack the multiple complexities, contradictions and tensions in rural India and go beyond the standard developmentalist approach. What is required is to locate the heterogeneity of rural India in a perspective that recognizes regional variations, contextualizes the different political economies and assesses in an honest manner the role of the state in the life of rural India. Since agriculture and rural development are primarily state subjects, there is an urgent need to understand how state policies have created differences in the various regions. Concomitant with this would be to highlight specific state variations in successes and failures in policy and implementation levels.

The report also recognizes that marginal cultivators form the single largest proportion of cultivators and residents in rural areas. Given this, much more attention needs to be given to understanding their lives, forms of occupational diversification, risks, trends and conditions. Understanding conditions at the household level will be imperative as this has direct significance for a range of developmental factors and for the overall well-being of persons. Similarly, since academic studies have expended much energy and time on the ‘agrarian question’ (and much of it still remains a question), it is imperative that social science studies focus on the agency and conditions of agriculturists themselves. Currently, rural India is subject to an intensification of dualism or what the late Kalyan Sanyal called ‘endogenous dualism’. In the context of agriculture, there is the spread of commercial/capitalized agriculture and the growth of marginal cultivators. What is the significance of this for the life-worlds of rural India? How do these span out in the areas of politics and social relations?

An excessive emphasis on standard developmental parameters (with a focus on infrastructure) in the report has meant that the problems of violence in the rural areas have been largely overlooked. How and what are the factors that have given rise to rural violence (Muzzafanagar is only the most recent case) need to be factored in. Details of caste, class, communal and gender violence need to be portrayed and the linkages to life conditions of the average rural resident need to be emphasized. A review of life conditions in the North East and in Kashmir (which are witness to varied forms of violence) will enable us to have a comprehensive picture of rural life in India.

The report has a competent summary of key central schemes and highlights some of the challenges in implementing them. However, there is no analytical review of why the programmes fail. Given the surfeit of programmes (many populist) and the layering of schemes, it is time for a thorough review of all central and state schemes. If these are being usurped or captured by vested interests or middle persons or agents/political entrepreneurs, there is need to consider ways to address this problem. In addition, attention must be paid to the range of illegalities that have emerged in rural areas and which now form an alternative and shadow system that marks the lives of many people and which sabotage real developmental work.

The report notes the overexploitation of resources but fails to indicate what and which are the mechanisms and agencies which promote such exploitation. For example, the despoliation of ecology in the mining belts of Odisha and Karnataka is not to be seen as only an ecological or environmental issue, but as a key contradiction in which the state has been complicit in facilitating capital expansion and expropriation. Similarly, there is no mention or review of the establishment of SEZs in rural areas. What has been their impact and what significance do they have for regional economies and societies?

The report bypasses a review of new legislations that have significance for land use and sustainability. If issues of land reform have been continuously postponed and if Acts such as LARR continue to be controversial, what are the implications of such legislations (or their absence) for both rural land markets and for land use? Although currently only limited in size, what are the implications of land allocations for recreational and entertainment facilities (such as Lavasa in Maharashtra)? What is the significance of the rise of ‘new urbanism’ in the rural belts?

The report seems to privilege infrastructural issues over that of justice and social growth. Although key terms such as ‘inclusion’ and ‘sustainability’ are used, they are not linked to understanding why these have not manifested or emerged in most of the rural areas. An alternative perspective would be to do a thorough review of some of the key institutions (going beyond the sectoral approach) such as schools, hospitals/primary health care centres/anganwadis etc. and see what accounts for their dysfunctional characteristics. The details should provide answers to the question: How are governmental institutions functioning in rural areas?

The details in the report highlight the need for a major overhaul of both policies and administration. If the Government of India or the Department of Rural Development is considering some follow-up work, then it must consider ways and processes by which all rural development/welfare policies and programmes (and institutions linked to them) are reviewed. What is immediately required is for all state governments to institute processes for continuous monitoring and evaluation of all programmes. Similarly, there is need for better inter-departmental and inter-ministerial coordination for all rural programmes. The report accurately highlights the key problems with the green revolution model of agriculture and also indicates some possible alternatives. However, the key issue of the violation of the ecological bases and principles of India’s varied/plural agricultural forms and the need to build on these (esp in the context of global warming) is not raised. More attention needs to be paid to agri-ecological specificities and to alternative ways of sustaining and enhancing them.

The report provides a succinct and competent overview of the problems in rural governance, especially those related to the panchayat raj system. More specifically it notes details such as the fact that on an average a sarpanch is expected to track 470 accounts, deal with 17 line departments etc. (p 220). In such a context, and given that the possibilities of the PRIs are being eroded by the range of illegalities, the lack of accountability and the general overload, what are the alternatives or administrative measures by which PRIs can be made viable and functional?

The overview of the MGNREGS in the report is thorough and lays to rest some of the commonplace misconceptions that have been directed against it. A key point that the review indicates is that of the lack of specialized skills or professionals such as computer operators, accountants, technical specialists etc. to support the scheme in rural areas. How can such a cadre of specialists be made available to rural areas? Should such issues not be linked to the GoI’s efforts to develop skills for youth?

The report must be appreciated for the details and the comprehensive assessments of key programmes. Yet, if the report and its contents are to feed into addressing the myriad problems of rural and agrarian India, then it must also be drawn on as the key guideline to policy shifts so that the rural and the agricultural/agrarian are no longer treated as burdens in an otherwise globalizing national economy. What has been absent so far in policy circles, the new imaginaries required to make rural India vibrant and sustainable, must become part of any new report that the GoI plans to develop.

A.R. Vasavi

Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial

Museum and Library, Delhi