AGAINST the conventional understanding of scientific expertise as vested with the scientific community, the mode 2 knowledge production debate in the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Studies argues that scientific expertise has become (is becoming) more socially distributed. The scholars who support this view suggest the emergence of several other locations of expertise in late modernity where the individual has more stakes in decision making as vindication of the social distribution of expertise.¹ This manifests as increased public deliberation and citizen participation in decision making related to public issues and controversies where science and technology are involved. According to Hagendijk, this arises from the claim of the individual on the regulation of the social world which is prone to the risks created by techno-science where s/he feels that the experts cannot be blindly relied upon.² The regulation of the social world demands more responsibility from the citizens and hence the need to gather information from and consultation of diverse sources of expertise.

The notion of expertise, according to many scholars, thus gets extended beyond the realm of science. Most public controversies and policy issues today solicit a wide spectrum of expert opinion due to the complexity of the issues involved as well as science’s inability to account for the technical, socio-economic and cultural consequences of the problems at hand. Therefore, the proponents of mode 2 knowledge production argue that the networking of these different sites of expertise is essential for contemporary liberal democracies to enhance a more socially robust process of knowledge production. The new mode of knowledge production entails multi-faceted debate, but the crisis for the stakeholders in the debate and the governments is how this copious sum of contradictory opinions and technical arguments has to be processed to reach a wider democratic consensus leading to better, inclusive policy options.

 

The academic debate on the decision making process on S&T related issues in liberal democracies can be classified into two extreme positions, and a variety of attempts to blend them. Some scholars argue for maximum public participation in the decision making process by initiating wider public deliberation through various means, incorporating more localized committees and forums where experts of different varieties can be included.³ Here, the scientific expertise is considered as only one kind of expertise, which is at par with lay expertise, as shown by the classic case study on the Cumbrian sheep farmers by Brian Wynne.⁴ From this vantage point, the lay expertise of the ordinary citizen becomes important as they have specialized knowledge on the issue, gathered from their day to day experiences. Governmental authorities and the scientific community, these scholars suggest, should seriously engage with the lay experts to produce better knowledge.

 

Distinct from this Habermasian position that favours deliberation, there is a John Rawlsian standpoint that emphasizes decision making.⁵ The latter has its best articulation so far in the Third Wave debate in STS.⁶ Collins and Evans opine that wide public deliberation is essential on S&T related issues and controversies to open up the black box, but decision making has to reach a final stage where the scientific experts should have the final word. This is achieved, as they suggest, through a complex discursive mechanism in which a separation of the early political phase of deliberation (where diverse interests and opinions are debated in public) from a later technical stage (where experts on various aspects of the issue are exclusively involved) that aims at achieving a final decision on the issue under deliberation. Without such a mechanism, they argue, any consensus on S&T related issues and controversies would be difficult to accomplish.

 

A major limitation of this scholarly debate on expertise, in the wider context of a changing contract between science and society, is that only western empirical contexts are invoked towards these theoretical conclusions, and the empirical contexts of the rest (or the most) of the world is either understood from the vantage point of the western STS, or simply ignored. Do these normative models significant in developing countries like India, where democratic processes as well as the form of the state substantially differ from the same in the West?⁷ 

In a society where scientific institutions are deeply shaped by caste and gender and the scientific expert is still a hierarchical figure who represents the state, the ‘social distribution of expertise’ takes a different course in its actualisation. Therefore, this essay attempts to provide a quick mapping of how scientific expertise is understood and practised in India, a country where a strong politico-epistemological contract between the state and science catalyzed by a Bernalist-Nehruvian vision of science emerged in the postcolonial reconstructive phase.⁸ 

During this phase, the strong alliance between scientists and politicians inaugurated a path of national development propelled by S&T, its epistemological engine.⁹ Scientists turned to be the unchallenged heroes of the nation, and their epistemological authority was upheld in the decision making process. However, by the late 1970s and early 1980s this confidence and trust in scientific experts started deteriorating, thanks to the environmental and anti-developmentalist movements and industrial disasters like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The wider shifts in the global discourse on science, technology and development also influenced this attitudinal shift in India, inaugurating a new phase of public engagement with science and technology. This trend has gained momentum in the post-liberalization phase with the threat of corporatization of everyday life as well as the plundering of natural resources and the implementation of large scale ‘development’ projects.

 

Although it is far easier to identify this discursive shift with a changing configuration of the science-society relationship as diagnosed by the mode 2 knowledge production thesis, more empirically bound analysis is required to theorize the configurational changes in the Indian contract between science and the state in the neo-liberal phase. Many of the assumptions of the mode 2 thesis including the withering away or the dilution of the powerful nation states as well as the theory’s attempt to set aside the larger structural contexts of neoliberalism are noted as flawed even in western contexts,¹⁰ which makes the exploration of Indian situation more challenging and interesting.

Two recent instances of decision making on techno-scientific projects are examined here with the objective of understanding the changing meanings and practices of expertise in India. First, the moratorium declared by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on the decision of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC)¹¹ to allow the environmental release of the genetically modified Bt brinjal after organizing a series of public consultations. Second, the government’s decision to continue with the commissioning of the first two nuclear reactors at Kudankulam, Tamil Nadu, amidst a strong public reaction to the same in the post-Fukushima context. A preliminary analysis of these cases itself suggests that without understanding the post-colonial state and its multiple modes of governmentality, it is difficult to capture how expertise is employed at or getting distributed across various sites.

 

The GEAC in its 97th meeting on 14 October 2009 evaluated the Bt brinjal developed by the Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co. Ltd (Mahyco)¹² ‘for its efficacy and safety as per the protocols and procedures prescribed under the [Environment Protection Act] Rules 1989 and relevant biosafety guidelines’ and concluded that ‘Bt brinjal is effective in controlling target pests, save to [sic] environment, non toxic in toxicity and animal feeding tests, non-allergenic and has potential to benefit the farmers.’¹³ Based on this assessment, the expert committee granted approval for its large scale field trials, which raised a large public hue and cry.

In the meeting, P.M. Bhargava, the renowned biotechnologist who was a special invitee to the committee as a nominee of the Supreme Court of India, argued that the safety assessment was not perfect and hence more tests needed to be conducted, but his arguments were not subscribed to by other members. The committee also examined and rejected the oppositional claims of various national and international NGOs. The GEAC’s decision was based on two technical (expert) committee reports (EC I and II) along with the report of the Review Committee on Genetic Manipulations (RCGM). The technical committees (especially EC II) claimed that it examined even the scientific reports generated by civil society organizations.

 

The recommendations of GEAC were made available in the public domain by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). In the wake of strong public criticism, Jairam Ramesh, the then minister of MoEF, initiated public consultations in seven cities across the country during the months of January and February in 2010, inviting active participation of a wide array of stakeholders like farmers, consumers, scientists and NGOs along with the representatives of Mahyco. An assessment of the whole process of decision making in this case points out that it set new procedures in the history of S&T related decision making in the country, indicating changes in the science-society relationship. This was the first time that a decision made by a scientific expert committee was thrown open by the state for wider public deliberation, although the procedural requirement for a limited ‘public hearing’ has been part of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) process since 1997.

The public consultations organized by the ministry were massive in nature. According to the official report, ‘nearly 6000 participants registered for the seven consultations and an estimated 2000 more attended or demonstrated outside the venues. More than 9000 written submissions, some of them of book length, were presented to the minister.’¹⁴ Wider deliberation through media and other informal public events occurred in parallel with the official consultations as fallout, besides the public opinion solicited by the MoEF through email. This initiative thus created a new, three-tier structure of social distribution of expertise: at the core there was the GEAC and its technical committees which had taken the decision; then this decision was deliberated in structured public forums, and finally a wider, informal deliberative sphere which emerged around it. Following the public consultations, the MoEF declared a moratorium on field trials of Bt brinjal in India. The governmental attempt to constitute the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) to regulate the research, commercialization and use of GMOs in the country also gained momentum after the event.¹⁵ 

 

The MoEF insisted that the whole debate was supposed to be held in the (structured) public consultations limited to the environmental release of Bt brinjal, and that the larger ethical and epistemological questions could not be discussed. The minister in his note made it clear that the issue he was concerned with was ‘limited to what to do with the GEAC recommendation on the commercialisation of Bt brinjal,’ and ‘not with the larger issue of genetic engineering and biotechnology in agriculture.’¹⁶ However, these issues were perceived as inseparable in the outer tier of the deliberative process, that is, in the media and informal citizen forums. The GEAC was constituted exclusively of scientists from related scientific fields, and did not include any representative of civil society organizations or farmers’ unions. One of its members was an economist,¹⁷ although socio-economic analysis was considered outside the committee’s mandate. There were only two dissenting members in the committee – P.M. Bhargava and Ramesh V. Sonti.¹⁸ Both of them were not against the environmental release of GMOs per se, but pointed out certain technical flaws in the scientific procedure.

 

The emergent structure of decision making was new, for its two outer tiers which were meant for inclusion of public opinion. The core of this structure (tier 1) consisted exclusively of scientific experts who took key technical decisions. The meaning of expertise was more parochially decided since it was limited to a few scientific disciplines. While keeping this inner core intact, the second tier was proposed as more inclusive of expertise from a wide range of areas and disciplines, including lay-expertise. Nevertheless, the discussions in the second tier of public consultations, as we have seen, were restricted to questions directly and exclusively related to the socio-technical aspects of Bt brinjal and broader issues related to the development of GMOs and commercialization of agriculture were precluded.

 

At the same time these public consultations were different in their reach and scope from the public hearings conducted by the government officials before sanctioning development projects. Unlike the public hearings, the public consultations of the MoEF were well-organized and inclusive of a wide range of stakeholders. The consultations also catalyzed a wider public deliberation, especially through the media. The public sphere thus constituted was far more inclusive and diverse in its deliberative content, and influenced and informed the formal public consultations in the second tier, while remaining open and informal. A suspension of field trials of Bt brinjal was the immediate positive result of the public consultations.

However, this is a partial story. The construction of the first two nuclear reactors in Kudankulam reveals the nuclear establishment and the state’s callousness to the local public’s demand for establishing democratic, epistemologically inclusive procedures to assess the viability of nuclear energy projects. The Indo-Russian collaborative project faced strong protest from the local villagers, who were organized in 2001 under the banner of the People’s Movement against Nuclear Energy (PMANE). The protest of the villagers attained national attention in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, gathering strong and wide support from civil society.

It is in this context that the Department of Atomic Energy of the Government of India set up a fifteen member Expert Group (hereafter, EG) consisting of scientific experts from various related fields of specialization with a mandate to ‘explain the factual position on various aspects of the project and... also [to] dispel apprehensions of some sections of the local people.’¹⁹ The EG met the representatives of local villages and government officials nominated by the Tamil Nadu state government and discussed various issues included in its mandate. The PMANE had two representatives (Pushparayan and Sesuraj), while another representative of the local people who did not belong to the movement was nominated.²⁰ 

 

Three consecutive meetings were organized by the EG. The PMANE representatives’ demand that the EG must meet the local public in a public consultation and its suggestion to discuss the technical issues with the expert committee of the movement was turned down, although the EG responded to the report prepared by the PMANE expert committee,²¹ refuting all its technical arguments against the official claims of high efficacy and safety of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP). Following three meetings the EG declared it had ‘addressed all the relevant issues’ and concluded that ‘the KKNPP meets all current safety requirements for safe operation.’²²

The expert committee of the PMANE was comprised of 28 members and a coordinator. It consisted of a wider set of experts than the EG, including social scientists, legal experts, activists, policy makers along with veteran scientists and engineers. In contrast, the expertise of the EG was mostly limited to the nuclear sciences. As we have seen, the EC of PMANE had published a detailed study report on the safety and feasibility of the KKNPP and proposed alternatives to the nuclear project. However, the government never acknowledged this committee or involved it directly in the negotiations as demanded by the PMANE. It should also be noted that the nominated spokespersons of the movement consistently pointed out in their meetings with the EG their non-expertise in technical matters related to nuclear energy and requested the EG to invite the EC of PMANE for an effective and informed discussion, but their demand was turned down.

 

The EG was not a committee with a mandate to conduct a neutral technical assessment nor was it a decision making committee like the GEAC in the Bt Brinjal case. Instead, this was a tentative strategy worked out by the government to neutralize the growing opposition to the commissioning of the power plant as part of the state’s larger strategy to curb the anger of the local villagers and the general public in wake of the Fukushima disaster. Nor did the government initiate any public consultation regarding KKNPP as in the former case.

The nuclear establishment avoided any technically informed debate on the project with the highly qualified experts who challenged the official scientific explanations about the viability of the project. Interestingly, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the former president of India who was professionally a technocrat, posed as a spokesperson of the state and addressed the wider public through his writings and talks. He declared the KKNPP to be completely safe and essential for India’s future energy security. He even visited the KKNPP under the guise of an ‘expert’ to give legitimacy to the project. Kalam did not have any substantial expertise on nuclear energy related issues, but was projected as an expert, while the EC of the PMANE was never acknowledged for its expertise.

 

The cases we have discussed here reveal the multiple meanings of scientific expertise and its varied employment in specific contexts. While the first case (Bt brinjal) indicates a willingness of the state to acknowledge the social distribution of expertise and the need for public participation in decision making, the second case (KKNPP) suggests a contradictory trend. I argue that the way the notion of expertise is understood and socially distributed is determined in connection with the varied modes of governmentality employed by the state-technoscience duo on different publics constituted by the civil society (the scientific-citizen publics) and the political society (the quasi-publics).²³ 

While the state-technoscience duo that emerged through a tacit political contract between the state and the technoscientific complex started becoming more open to formally and carefully include the scientific-citizen publics of civil society in the decision making process in recent times, utmost care has been taken to ensure that this does not undermine the seasoned contract itself. This is evident in the case of opening up to public deliberations in the decision making process on Bt brinjal, while making sure that this would not create any serious impediment to the future development of GMOs in the country.²⁴ 

 

The expert committee at the core remains exclusively constituted with members of the scientific community in both the cases we have discussed. In the former case, the concerns and worries of the scientific-citizen publics were acknowledged; in the latter case, the public who are directly affected by the KKNPP were denied any such inclusion and they have never been considered as legitimate participants in the deliberative process. Their democratic right to regulate their own social world was seriously curtailed. The state-technoscience duo employed its pastoral power to manage them as they belonged to the political society, a shady zone outside the civil society.²⁵ 

The quasi-publics of the political society cannot be granted full citizenship and hence meaningful participation in decision making. They are treated more like children who need parental guidance in contrast to the scientific-citizen publics of the civil society who enjoy full legal entitlements to participate in the regulatory aspects of their social worlds. The villagers in Kudankulam are consequently being managed through welfare mechanisms and punitive action by the state-technoscience duo.

Any technoscientific project in the country corroborates a similar treatment extended to the quasi-publics. This mode of governmentality coexists with an increased willingness of the state-technoscience duo to engage with the civil society as in the Bt brinjal consultations. The idea of scientific expertise was understood as more inclusive and socially distributed in the first case. On the contrary, in the second case, expertise is understood as vested exclusively on the representatives of the state-technoscience duo, largely the nuclear scientists. Even those who have scientific expertise are not taken seriously if they align themselves with the quasi-publics, as we have seen in the context of the EC of the PMANE. At the same time, non-experts like A.P.J. Abdul Kalam can successfully claim scientific expertise, because of their role as spokespersons of the state-technoscience duo.

 

This indicates that the postcolonial contract between the state and science remains intact even today, while varied governmental strategies have been developed by the state-technoscience duo to manage the raising concerns among the publics (of civil and political societies) on the right to regulate their social world in the context of a growing distrust in science. The question of social distribution of expertise is largely farcical and the way expertise is understood and employed in the context of technoscientific controversies are directly linked to the governmental strategies adopted in reference to different publics of technoscience. This further hints that the changing configuration of science has altogether a different trajectory in ‘most of the world’,²⁶ as empirical evidences from postcolonial nation states like India suggest. The claim of ‘social distribution of expertise’ has hence to be discussed more cautiously in the non-western contexts.

 

Footnotes:

1. Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott and Michael Gibbons, Rethinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in the Age of Uncertainty. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2001, p. 221.

2. R.P. Hagendijk, ‘The Public Understanding of Science and Public Participation in Regulated Worlds’, Minerva 42(1), 2004, pp. 41-59.

3. See Alan Irwin, Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise and Sustainable Development. Routledge, London and New York, 1995; Sheila Jasanoff, ‘Breaking the Waves in Science Studies: Comment on H.M. Collins and Robert Evans, "The Third Wave of Science Studies"’, Social Studies of Science 33(3), 2003, pp. 389-400; Brian Wynne, ‘Public Understanding of Science’, in Sheila Jasanoff et al. (eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks, Sage Publishers, London and New Delhi, 1994, pp. 361-388; Brian Wynne, ‘Misunderstood Misunderstandings: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science’, in Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne (eds.), Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 19-46.

4. See Brian Wynne, 1994, op cit.

5. See for a detailed discussion, Darrin Durant, ‘Models of Democracy in Social Studies of Science’, Social Studies of Science 41(5), 2011, pp. 691-714.

6. H.M. Collins and Robert Evans, ‘The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience’, Social Studies of Science 32(2), 2002, pp. 235-296.

7. See Sudipta Kaviraj, The Trajectories of the Indian State: Policies and Ideas. Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2010.

8. Dhruv Raina, ‘Evolving Perspectives on Science and History: A Chronicle of Modern India’s Scientific Enchantment and Disenchantment (1850-1980)’, Social Epistemology 11(1), 1997, pp. 3-24.

9. Ibid.

10. See Aant Elzinga, The New Production of Particularism in Models Relating to Research Policy: A Critique of Mode 2 and Triple Helix. Mimeograph, 2004; Peter Weingart, ‘From "Finalization" to "Mode 2": Old Wine in New Bottles?’ Social Science Information 36(4), 2004, pp. 591-613.

11. The GEAC has of late been renamed as Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee.

12. Mahyco is the Indian subsidiary of the corporate agricultural giant, Monsanto.

13. Decisions taken in the 97th Meeting of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) held on 14.10.2009, p. 1. http://www.envfor.nic.in/divisions/csurv/geac/decision-oct-97.pdf accessed on 26.11.2012. The GEAC was established in May 1990 as a statutory body under the Environment (Protection) Act of 1989 with the mandate to approve field trials and environmental release of GMOs in the country.

14. Centre for Environment Education, National Consultations on Bt Brinjal: Report. Prepared for the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India, 10 February 2010, p. 3.

15. Even though the idea of constituting a National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority was first mooted in 2003-04, draft of a National Biotechnology Regulatory Bill was made public for the first time only in 2008. The BRAI Bill (2013) now awaits approval of the Indian Parliament.

16. Jairam Ramesh, Minister’s Report: Decision on Commercialization of Bt-Brinjal. 9 February 2010, MoEF, GoI, New Delhi, p. 3.

17. M.N. Murty, Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi.

18. Scientist, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad.

19. ‘Department of Atomic Energy Constitutes an Expert Group for Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project.’ Press release, Department of Atomic Energy, 20 Oct. 2011.

20. Expert Group, Supplementary Report on Safety of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project and Impact of its Operations on Surroundings. 31 January 2012, p.3.

21. See PMANE Expert Committee, Report of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) Expert Committee on Safety, Feasibility and Alternatives to Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP), 12 December 2011. http://www.dianuke.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/PMANE_ Expert_Committee_Report_Dec_2011.pdf accessed on 25.11.2012.

22. Ibid., p. 4.

23. For a detailed exposition, see Shiju Sam Varughese, ‘Where are the Missing Masses? The Quasi-Publics and Non-Publics of Technoscience’, Minerva 50(2), 2012, pp. 239-254.

24. Similarly, an apex regulatory body will be created for nuclear energy, should the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill, 2011, be passed in the Parliament. Like BRAI, the NSRA is also criticized for its rigidity.

25. The idea of political society has been postulated by Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. Permanent Black, Delhi and Ranikhet, 2004.

26. Ibid.