The road to Amrit Kaal

Prime Minister Modi first used the term ‘Amrit Kaal’ in 2021. In his address on India’s 75th Independence Day, he said, “The goal of Amrit Kaal is to ascend to new heights of prosperity for India and the citizens of India.” Amrit Kaal, he said, is the next twenty-five-years.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman described the Union Budget for 2023-24 as the first budget of Amrit Kaal. “Our vision for Amrit Kaal includes a technology-driven and knowledge-based economy,” she said. So, what does the path ahead look like?

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Real obstacles stand in the way to achieving this vision. To begin with, the subversive impact of unscientific patterns of thinking on our outlook on life and its values is pervasive. Superstition and magic continue to capture the mind space of a vast population, regardless of the level of education. This is made worse by pseudoscience passing off as science. It is astonishing that several central universities, including the Indira Gandhi National Open University, are introducing two-year Master’s programmes in astrology, if you will, and the overwhelming majority is today uncritical of such crude forms of scientism. We continue to believe that the fault lies in our stars, not in ourselves. The general lack of a scientific temper constitutes a major barrier to India emerging as a developed country. Second, the foundational principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are alive only in theory, not in practice.

Third, an important remnant from the past with a powerful influence on how we live, learn, and work is the caste system.
Our attitudes have made science a prey to creeping paralysis. As a result of the separation of theory and practice, the how and why of phenomena or the relation between cause and effect are lost and the spirit of scientific enquiry weakened. Finally, as an old civilisation with a spiritual past, but a young country driven by science, India’s transition from a traditional to a modern society was interrupted by colonisation. The result was that science came to the common man as a utilitarian pursuit rather than as ideas or a discipline of the mind. The indigenous world view and the discourse that circumscribes it remain, in some ways, in opposition to modern scientific knowledge. Examples of well-educated people being guided by astrology in important decisions, and the poor by black magic, are too numerous to dwell upon.

Karma and fatalism

In a country steeped in the idea of karma and the afterlife, there is a sense of fatalism that seeps through and permeates all social life; it determines how people respond to life’s myriad challenges. The direct result of such fatalism is the abdication of individual responsibility–one does not take responsibility for one’s own actions. Instead, one instead shifts responsibility to fate or the afterlife. How else do we salve our conscience of the injustice and oppression that we contribute to, or at the very least tolerate and turn a blind eye to? Not surprisingly, oftentimes, even the victims are resigned to their victimisation, in the belief that it is their karma. Promoting the scientific temper is therefore no easy task when the vast majority, burdened by social and economic deprivation, resign themselves to their fate. This state of society is a major hurdle, but it certainly is not insurmountable. What does constitute the central barrier to the opening of the minds of our youth to scientific humanism is the dangerous mix of pseudoscience and romanticised nationalism; the absence of the recognition of the value that science brings to the human project. The work of science is to expand the world view to value reason, reject unexamined dogma and authority, and provide a scientific basis to explain how the world around us works.

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Specious ideas

However, decisive weaknesses arise when pseudo science and harking back to a hoary past combine to reproduce specious ideas. This manifests in fantastic claims drawing on Indian mythology–for instance that mythological India had knowledge and technology of flying machines long before the Wright brothers invented the plane. Worse still, some dubious academics and scientists make fantastic claims that ancient India had knowledge of stem cell technology; and the ‘proof’ is drawn from mythology–they cite the case of a hundred Kauravas being born to one mother. Such fanciful claims do great harm to young impressionable minds. The greater danger is that even in a hundred-year-old institution like the Indian Science Congress, pseudo-science is peddled in a mix of jingoism and science fiction. This is what we need to address as a society.

One factor above all else that will shape the future of Indian society in the so-called Amrit Kaal is the advance of the scientific spirit across the population. We must make this the India success story of our time– to this, great undivided attention must be given by all. Centuries, hence, it is this feature of our time that will be held up to scrutiny and analysis. It is therefore important to reinforce the scientific temper. Knowledge restores to an individual the locus of control over her life and destiny, for once an individual has uncovered the oppressive forces that impact her life, she can seek to control or resist them. The growth of knowledge is the basis for the freedom of choice. As India evolves, reason has to triumph over dogma, science over superstition, and justice over oppression.

The Constitution holds the promotion of the scientific temper a fundamental duty. India is the first and only country to explicitly adopt scientific temper in its constitution. The time is now for leaders, scholars, and citizens alike to eschew pseudo-science and consciously promote the scientific temper. In time, sooner than later, it must permeate all of society, and only then can we be optimistic about India’s effervescence in Amrit Kaal. Else, it might just remain hot air!

(The writer is director, Public Affairs Centre, Bengaluru)