Dr Nakul Parashar
Director, Vigyan Prasar
Department of Science and Technology, Government of India
IISD's invited Distinguished Guest Blog

It's indeed a matter of great pride for all of us as citizens of this proud nation that the country is dotted with a number of educational and research institutions of eminence and due importance in the area of science & technology. With the advent of newer technologies, latest inventions, and discoveries, the number of such organizations is on a growth path. Yet, information about how many of these discoveries, inventions, and technologies reach a common man, is a big question. In today's world where Internet connectivity is available to almost everyone, questioning information dissemination seems to be quite strange. Isn't it? We seldom hear telling each other - just google it and you'll find it. Well, that's correct but it's reactive, and not a proactive approach. This means that if I were to know about a fact or an event, I would google and thus, search for it. On the contrary, I would hardly go all the way to read it on my own. This infers that general interest in knowing the intricacies of the wonderful world of science & technology is too little. In fact, we all claim that the world of science & technology is so interesting and intriguing. We are heard saying that if we start delving deeper into it, we'll come across the facts and figures that would bind the listener, reader, or the viewer, based upon the media he or she is linked with it. However, the reality is quite different. The fact is that the general audience considers science & technology related programs to be dry and drab. This is because most of the science programs for radio, television, social media, and print media are presented in the country in a very routine manner. This makes the content presentation uninteresting, which in turn, coerces the programs to lose its relation with the common masses. With this, the purpose of inculcating interest in science & technology in a common man is lost as well. The cascading effect of a citizen losing its interest in science and technology results in the decline of a nation's inclination towards building a scientific temper. The spirit of inquiry in the minds of the country's citizens is of paramount interest. To further develop that interest and passion within the citizens of the country science communicators, authors, and extension workers have to develop and design a number of real-time outreach strategies and overcome a number of challenges. These challenges, if perceived objectively, open up a plethora of opportunities in the domain of science communication, popularization, and its extension (SCoPE).

SCoPE is a fast-upcoming interdisciplinary domain of science & technology. It has a special mention in the new STIP (Science & Technology Innovation Policy) under the topic Science Communication and Public Engagement. Special emphasis is provided on capacity building and research. Under this topic, creative and cross-disciplinary platforms of science & technology communication will be promoted to enable dialogue and knowledge transfer between researchers, science communicators, and the public. Additionally, community-centric programmes and regional science centres will be encouraged to promote science communication in regional languages with local and hyper-local contexts for the last-mile connectivity. This salient point would include development and accessibility to publicly accessible, constantly updated, and searchable databases of science communication-related resources and opportunities.

Science communication and public engagement outreach or extension of activities is yet another major head under the relevance of SCoPE in the new STIP. It is In line with the national policy on Scientific Social Responsibility (SSR 2020), where scientists and researchers will be motivated and incentivised to engage in science communication and public engagement activities. Institutes and organizations will be encouraged to earmark a percentage of the allocated budget (SSR fund) for science communication and public engagement activities.

Under the new STIP, special impetus has been laid on mainstreaming science communication. Every public-funded institution and the department will have a dedicated wing set-up for science communication and public engagement in STI-related activities. Science Media Centres will be established at national and regional levels as an interface between media persons, scientists, and science communicators that can enable mainstream media to increase its coverage of scientific topics.

With a fast congruence of new media types like print, electronic, social, and digital media, SCoPE has created a niche for itself. In print media after a slump in science & technology-related news, we see that there is a gradual increase in the number of news/stories appearing in the dailies, weeklies, and monthlies. There are a number of factors that can be accredited to it. In recent times, especially during the COVID-19 period, knowledge to understand what is COVID-19 became one of the most sought after and a very natural search on the Internet. This curiosity to know more about the virus and developments happening around were obviously amongst the biggest searches. For those who had limited connectivity to the Internet, print & the electronic medium was the only resort for the people to quench their thirst to understand in detail about the virus. Besides, a surge has been noticed in the numbers and frequency of science & technology-related news being published in the print media. Pundits infer that there have been a number of science & technology-related events that have happened in the country in close succession, which have caught the attention of the general public. Meanwhile, the style of stories related to science & technology that have emerged recently, are far more written in a simple and easily understandable manner. Maybe the authors of these articles have understood the pulse of their readership. Thus, their style of explaining the intricacies of science & technology are far more reader-friendly than what their predecessors wrote. Thanks to a number of government & non-government organizations who have been working in this area of SCoPE for past many-many years now. They've noticed and observed how important is to train and develop science students, researchers, teachers, and decision-makers to write popular science articles. In addition to this, these organizations like Vigyan Prasar, Indian Science News Association, NCSTC, etc. also extended their experience and knowledge to a number of colleges and universities of mass communication to include SCoPE as a part of their curriculum. One can thus, notice that despite CoVID-19, a number of training workshops, seminars, and large conferences have happened over a period of two years. As a result, the quality of articles has improved. The number of contributors to the development of popular science for the common man has also increased. This has thus, has reopened a number of opportunities in form of a science desk at a number of print newspapers all over the country. We can thus, foresee a surge in job opportunities as science reporters and writers for regular dailies and periodicals. Vigyan Prasar, an autonomous organization of the Department of Science & Technology with the Government of India has been continuously organizing a number of training programs at various places in the country. With CSIR (Council for Scientific & Industrial Research), Vigyan Prasar has recently carried out a number of science writing, science film making, and similar training workshops. In order to attend to the need of the country, the SCoPE mandate of Vigyan Prasar and many similar organizations requires a number of science communicators on the ground, who could then further develop a new team of SCoPE executives on the train-the-trainer model. Vigyan Prasar also embarked upon a program to provide ready-made duly tailored news items to the dailies in various languages through one of its core activities called Science & Technology News of India. Consequently, with this the interest of a general reader in science & technology related print news & stories has increased manifold and will continue to increment rapidly.

There are a number of efforts being made by a number of organizations across the country. In this, it is worth mentioning that the Department of Science & Technology, through Vigyan Prasar, has been successfully conducting an annual program called AWSAR (Articulating Writing Skills in Augmenting Research), where research scholars at PhD and Post-Doctoral level are awarded for writing about their research program in simpler words to make a common man understand it. (https://www.awsar-dst.in/ ) This is one of the prominent examples of scientific social responsibility.

With the advent of newer technologies in the domain of media and entertainment, electronic media has witnessed a shift, and interestingly this trend change continues to grow as we speak. From cable to direct-to-home (DTH) to over-the-top (OTT), the visual telecast media is rapidly evolving. Visual stories, films, documentaries, and almost every genre of what we have seen on television has shifted to internet-based telecast thereby making everything available on hand-held devices. OTT for that matter is currently riding the wave, as we can observe people on the move can watch programs of their choice at any point in time. With OTT gaining utmost popularity, why would SCoPE stay behind? In this direction, Vigyan Prasar launched IndiaScience, (http://indiascience.in/ ) India's first OTT channel dedicated to science & technology about two years ago and has more than 2000 films catering to the needs of various segments of society.

The scope of SCoPE is thus, humongous and to cover it, a series of articles might suffice. To serve the society and accomplish the goal of scientific social responsibility, it is worth referring the article 51AH of the constitution: It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to develop the scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform.

Dr Nakul Parashar is the Director of Vigyan Prasar, an autonomous Organization of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, New Delhi.

This is an IISD's Invited Guest Blog, under Distinguished Personality Category.