6.1.1. Competing narratives of science, technology and development in independent India

One of the key leaders of the PSMs is Prof. Dinesh Abrol. He was formerly a chief scientist at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies in India and is currently (2018) a Professor at the Institute of Studies in Industrial Development in Delhi. In addition to being a key figure in the PSMs, Prof. Abrol has undertaken research to disclose the role of counter-hegemonic movements in the creation of modern India. He analyzed the political melting pot that characterized the post-independence years to understand how the politics of science and technology evolved in that period. He argues that after independence:

“the leaders of the national freedom movement [had] to build a multi-class alliance on the ground. Therefore, the leaders of post-independent India were very much ready to practice diversity and people oriented directions in the conduct of their politics of knowledge production” (Abrol 2013, p. 5).

At this particular moment in Indian history, three major narratives or political traditions struggled for affirmation, with three very different world views concerning science, technology and development (Abrol 2014). As Prof. Abrol remembers, these had very different “socio-technical imaginations” and “visions of a path to development”. These were the Gandhian, Nehruvian and Leftist traditions. The Gandhian philosophy, centered on the self-reliant and self-governing village economy and local democracy, was opposed to the notion of centralized power characteristic of the classical European national state (Gandhi 2008). While Gandhi was acutely aware of the necessity to improve the condition of the rural poor, he felt rural subsistence had to be preserved from industrialism because it was the only way to preserve the spirit of the country and, at the same time, allow for more equitable development (Abrol 2014; Gandhi 2008). Opposing the grand narrative of industrial progress, he instead advocated decentralized development based on indigenous, traditional and local knowledge, setting the scene for what would become the Appropriate Technology Movement (Jequier 1976) (see Part 1 of this book for more details). The Gandhian political agenda, however, lost its momentum with his assassination and the rise of a Nehruvian industrial policy that ushered in the development of large-scale industrial projects. Nevertheless, the ideas held by Gandhi and others such as Kumarappa survived and became admixed with Marxist and eco-socialist principles, which was presented as a myriad of grassroots initiatives and social movements (Wade 1987). The PSMs are one example of those countervailing movements (Abrol 2003).

The Nehruvian policy for development, which laid the foundations for the market-based innovation approach discussed in Chapter 2, advocated the establishment of a strong national industry, modernization of the agricultural sector and endogenous economic growth through quasi, state-planned capitalism (Nehru 2004). This often adopted a strategy of replication and imitation of foreign technology. Finally, the Leftist tradition, influenced by Marxist and anti-Imperialist positions, advocated the establishment of centrally coordinated, large technological systems managed by the workers. It supported a radical distribution of assets (especially land), the creation of modernized heavy industry, the modernization of agriculture through the “green revolution” and the construction of large, state-funded infrastructures to foster economic growth. This was far from an organized movement and in some cases, as in the southern state of Kerala, the Left was amenable to a more decentralized planning approach based on the promotion of technological models for local economic development, i.e. a more Gandhian vision (Heller 2001; Parameswaran 2013) (Figure 6.1).

During the 1950s, the negotiation between national planning and selfreliance positions was still visible within the political leadership of the time (Abrol 2014) and several experiments occurred to introduce concepts such as pro-poor innovation. However, incremental technological upgrading of the manufacturing sector and heavy industrialization became a consistent feature of the first Nehruvian government, consolidated further after the economic crisis of the 1960s. The reintroduction of a more Gandhian tradition after the elections of 1967 allowed the appropriate technology movement to regain momentum, especially in the states of Kerala and West Bengal. In the 1980s, neoliberalism came to occupy a dominant position within the government and academic institutions, which remains to this day: the Gandhian and Leftist traditions, from which the grassroots innovation approaches discussed in Chapter 2 emerged, are now only represented by a small minority. In this new political environment, those activists advocating for grassroots innovation have called for a return to a decentralized, community-based way of using technology and innovation to improve the lives of the Indian poor (see, for example, Abrol (2014) and Gupta (2012) and Part 1 for a more detailed discussion).

6.1.2. Pro-poor innovation for productive networks

From its inception, the PSMs encouraged scientists and activists to participate in socially motivated, pro-poor innovations (Varma 2001). Anchored in a Leftist tradition, their normative stance was that the fruits of scientific progress must be shared with the lower sectors of Indian society (Jaffry et al. 1983). By educating people to understand science and technology and by connecting them to the public research institutions of the country, the PSMs aimed to overcome class oppression. The PSMs connected with Indian universities and public research centers, serving as an interface between science and traditional Indian society. Prof. Abrol summed up their strategy with two questions: How do we use science to improve our traditional technologies? How can we upgrade our pre-existing systems of production to become globally competitive?

Their aim was to strengthen pre-existing networks of production in a manner that could be competitive with MNCs, building networks to deliver practical, usable technologies. By encouraging scientific literacy, discouraging competition in the local economy and encouraging collaboration in networks of rural producers, they aimed to empower the weaker sections of rural society. As Prof. Abrol told us:

“Like the Gandhians, we had our own understanding of what local economies are. But we turned Gandhi upside down because, as Marxists, we wanted neither to subordinate ourselves to the pre-existing model of feudal relations nor to subordinate to the market. We wanted to create new structures. We were also aware of the fact that the centralised planning systems have their own weaknesses. Although we saw the role of the state, we wanted a multi-level planning that allowed the local economies to influence the national level. […] We were not pure centralist. You know, there is nothing in this particular country which is not hybrid”.

“We saw local economies as providers of economies of scale. We thought that they could even compete with the transnational corporations and the big business. […] Only 30% of the Indian poor have some land, but they can do something. They are embedded in networks of production. How do we work with them, how do we empower them? And how do we empower them in a manner that they can actually become competitive to the transnational corporations? Petty producers cannot compete on their own without cooperating among themselves, it is not possible. […] We supersede the Gandhian conception”.

The PSM model of development centers on pre-existing networks of productive units. Their focus has been the network of horizontal and multi-sectorial links that connect not individual artisans, but village economies:

“In the village, nothing is made by one artisan. Everything is made by the participation of the whole village and the contributions of the next villages, where there are the capabilities of repairing, maintenance or other kind of services. There is a whole structure of local economy […] Gandhi saw them as individual producers. We started seeing them actually as individual producers being embedded in networks”.

According to Prof. Abrol, the notion of competitive individual producers using labor-intensive, small-scale intermediate technologies is guided by a philosophy of competitiveness, which stresses the role of isolated agents and neglects the fact that production, even the traditional way of production, is always embedded in wider cultural and social contexts. Single, isolated farmers cannot scale their activities to compete with big businesses unless they become part of a network of producers. By encouraging collaboration in networks of rural producers, the PSM activists were convinced that they could make the rural economy more competitive vis-à-vis the larger, urban industries.

A practical manifestation of this philosophy is the People’s Technology Initiatives (PTI), a quasi “proto innovation system” applied to the Indian rural world, which attempts to build technology systems around local knowledge and resources. At the beginning of December 2013, we spent one week at the Integrated Rural Technology Centre, or IRTC, in the state of Kerala, established by the KSSP. The KSSP was one of the first PSMs founded in 1962. The IRTC is located in the center of paddy fields near Palakkad. It consists of seven buildings built with locally available materials, following a mix of traditional and modern techniques. In this sense, the center is a small monument to frugal innovation and appropriate technology. The main office is powered by a 2 kw photovoltaic system. The office is run by open-source platforms: they use a Linux-type system called Debian. All the buildings are equipped with locally designed and constructed biogas systems, fed by food waste. The main kitchen is supplied by a large biogas plant that is able to produce 5–6 hours of cooking gas per day. Rainwater is collected through a system that interconnects the roofs and is stored in a tank to be redistributed within the building with a solar electric pump. The center is also equipped with a mechanical workshop, a chemical laboratory, a pottery workshop, a plant to produce compost from market waste, a plant to process natural rubber, a fish farm, a mushroom farm and a congress hall. The center also hosts several local grassroots organizations, organizes and hosts various training courses and is a popular laboratory for applying scientific knowledge to rural settings. Over almost two decades of activity, the IRTC has developed a wide range of technological products and processes with the intention of upgrading the productivity of rural communities in Kerala.

Director of the IRTC and former scientist from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Dr. Lalithambika, explained the “KSSP approach to Science & Technology” by giving the example of soap production. She stated that, in Kerala, the production of soap traditionally occurs at a domestic level. Soap is traditionally produced in households using locally available raw materials, mainly coconut oil. With the introduction of industrial soap, the cost of raw materials increased and the attraction of homemade soap drastically decreased. Industrial soap is cheaper and comes in all sorts of colors, shapes and flagrances. According to Dr. Lalithambika, however, the soap industry drove the price of coconut oil to unaffordable levels for the rural poor. Moreover, industrial soap often contains unknown chemical compounds that threaten the quality of local aquifers. For these reasons, at the IRTC they developed an improved process to make soap based on traditional techniques. The process has been standardized and is diffused through the KSSP network in the territory. KSSP activists in every panchayat (the local districts) of the state are in charge of promoting the soap-making technology on a volunteer basis. Those who are interested, mainly women, can spend a few days at the IRTC to learn the process. In order to control the quality and improve the efficiency of the process, the IRTC has developed a “soap kit” that contains all the raw materials in the right proportions. People can then personalize their soap by adding locally available natural oils. The kits have been designed to produce soap that is cheaper than their industrial counterparts. However, the aim of the center is not to scale the process or create a market for the KSSP soap, but rather to foster the community consumption of locally produced commodities. In the words of the IRTC director:

“I can make soap sitting in my house. It takes only one or two hours for 20 soaps. They can purchase the kit from here. And they can take coconut oil from their own yard, their backyard coconut where they can produce these oils. This soap, which they are making, is partly for self-consumption and partly for neighbourhood selling. Thousands of people we have trained from here”.

The same approach is applied to pottery, waste management, biogas plants, rubber manufacture, cooking technologies and other farming technologies. All the innovations and improvements made to pre-existing traditional processes are not primarily designed to be sold in a competitive market but rather to substitute non-local with self-produced products. However, it is important to note that the center does not preclude the wider sale of products, and indeed a major source of income for the IRTC is the supply of soap to hospitals and schools in Kerala. They also manufacture and sell different kinds of machinery for small-scale local workshops.

The creation of the PTI emerged from the conviction that mainstream innovation policy tends to focus on how to remove barriers that encumber interactions between research organizations and the practitioners’ world in the limited context of public–private partnerships. This neglects questions of participation and equality of access from the weaker sections of society. The villagers’ role is merely to make their land and labor available for agricultural production, or at best, to participate in the process of value creation as lower-end producers in long value chains controlled by large private companies or public–private collaborative entities. While the innovation system approach seeks to replace existing relations with more efficient technological innovation systems, the PTI attempts to do the opposite: to build such systems around local knowledge and resources.

In Abrol’s view, perhaps the most important reason for experimenting with alternative ways of organizing the rural economy is the failure of successive national programs to address the needs of the poor, echoing the desire to address institutional voids that we encountered in the previous case studies. Those failures include the limits of rural development plans promoted by the central government and shortcomings of the Green Revolution (e.g. degradation of land, pollution, exclusion of poor farmers, dependency on large agro-businesses for pesticides and fertilizers (see also the extensive work documenting the politics of the Green Revolution in Shiva (1991)). However, the PTI, he argues, was also a reaction to the failure of the appropriate and intermediate technology movements, which, he contends, placed too much emphasis on technological aspects and, in doing so, failed to understand that the real problem in rural settings is the way in which production is organized and the power relationships that govern this.

The PSMs rejected the notion of stand-alone small-scale producers in favor of a network-based approach, at the same time rejecting the dependency on intermediate actors such as Grameen Shakti or Mother Earth. Their ultimate goal is to empower rural producers, to build up networks of producers with a strict collaboration between networks and public institutions such as the CSIR, aiming to foster productive activities while preserving the integrity of rural life and ways of being. Prof. Abrol listed a number of PTI experiments carried out by the PSMs with the help of formal institutions such as the CSIR. These have been undertaken in 16 sectors across seven Indian states (Abrol 2003; Abrol 2004; Abrol 2005; Abrol 2014; Pulamte and Abrol 2003). Each initiative has involved about 200–300 households spread over about 30 rural and semi-rural settlements: the economic and social impact of these initiatives remains contested.

6.1.3. Innovation as a political artifact

What emerges from our interviews is a sharp critique of innovation, which is framed as being a depoliticized phenomenon, rather than how respondents felt it should be seen: as a Western-imported political artifact. According to PSM activists, the rhetoric of innovation portrayed in Western innovation policies, documents (e.g. Frascati and Oslo manuals) and practices (e.g. innovation surveys) neglects and often dismisses local (and indigenous) knowledge, culture, social and power relations and politics. The imported notion of innovation as a “Western discourse” overlooks the complexity of Indian society and, more importantly, imposes a number of assessment indicators that, by merely focusing on economic performance, neglect the politics of innovation and production on the ground. As one Bangalore PSM activist told us:

“We just imported the concept and methodology and then we copied and pasted in India. We dismiss local knowledge and Indian journals. We wanted to publish in the foreign journals. The people in India accepted blindly some flawed concept like measuring innovation. […] People are happy because they can count patent. […] You can see what the hegemony of Western science has done to us even in the science and technology studies”.

The PSM activists perceive market-based inclusive business and inclusive innovation as being complicit in this. In their view, ideas of inclusive innovation serve to position the poor as consumers or producers in a way that does not challenge the social and political structures that cause poverty, inequality and exclusion. In the PSM’s narrative, inclusive business/innovation forms “a new kind of political project” (in the words of an interviewee) that perpetuates market-based, industrial capitalism. In Abrol’s words:

“In this new season, sexy words have [been] created. We never used the word innovation. Innovation was itself a sexy word and now inclusive business is another sexy word. […] See this inclusive business concept is adverse inclusion. It is profit seeking and accumulation processes. So, what is inclusion to me? What is inclusive business? You increase your market for 10 more consumers in some rural area whom we give a model of mobile which is different from the one used by Mukesh Ambani¹, that’s inclusion? They do not want any inclusion. We don’t want any inclusion, we want equity, and we want empowerment. Inclusion cannot do empowerment. The inclusion in the market means that the dominant power remains where it is”.

To Prof. Abrol, the emergence of this new concept of “inclusive business models” represents the frontier of the expansion of neoliberal, capitalist ideology in India. They promote the idea of the poor becoming integrated into a market economy in which the state only assumes a marginal role as a mediator and a broker. This vision advocates for the inclusion of independent, poor producers and consumers in a global market with the withdrawal of state support and subsidy, in his view subsidizing big business and promoting business-driven solutions. According to our PSM’s interviewees, inclusive innovation and inclusive business models frame poverty and social exclusion as a delivery issue, neglecting the causes of poverty and inequality which are, they argue, overtly political.

After an initial strategy based on the popularization of scientific thinking (and raising of scientific literacy) among the poor, the PSMs elaborated a second strategy that they called “science for social revolution” (Parameswaran 2013). This was inspired by the feeling that once people have been endowed with the instruments to understand science, they should use this as an agent of transformation. As George D’Cruz, one of the early KSSP activists, told us:

“the people have to decide their destiny. For that they should have a weapon to fight against those who are against them. And the weapons should be science. Knowledge, so we have to equip people with the weapon. Namely, knowledge and science”.

The slogan “science for social revolution” was forged and is clearly stated in the PSM manifesto:

“The majority that was getting impoverished were increasingly able to see and understand how the minority is using its knowledge and skills to perpetuate its hegemony and, consequently, resist it more and more effectively. The ultimate success of the majority to stop and reverse this impoverishment is termed as ‘social revolution’ and led to the adoption of the slogan ‘science for social revolution’” (Parameswaran 2013, p. 131).

Science, knowledge, technological change and innovation were seen as being intimately entwined as a political project that does not necessarily benefit the underprivileged majority; on the contrary, it usually favors a wealthy minority. The conceptualization of socio-technical change as a political, non-agnostic process has been forged within the PSM narrative over years of collective action and campaigns. At the beginning, the urgency to overcome the semi-feudal culture that was so deep-rooted in Indian society manifested itself with a strong emphasis on scientific rationality, scientific popularization and raising scientific literacy. Then, the movements realized that the “incorporation of Science & Technology in the production process was not taking place in a vacuum but within the parameters of a profit-oriented society” (Parameswaran 2013, p. 22). It was in the 1980s when the PSMs became acutely aware that science, technology and innovation can be sources and means for exclusion and environmental degradation. This awareness resulted in the mobilization against several development projects promoted by the central and local government as well as big corporations. Examples are the campaigns against the construction of a spillway in the delta of Kuttanad, the construction of a dam in the Silent Valley National Park that threatened to flood an important reservoir of wildlife and innumerable anti-pollution struggles conducted in the industrial regions of Kerala² (ibid., pp. 22–29). The objectives of those campaigns were to educate people to understand how to interpret the data coming from scientific research and to use this to disarm the logic behind these development projects.

Drawing on those experiences, the PSMs, and in particular the KSSP, elaborated a countervailing anti-capitalistic discourse that combines typical Marxist positions (e.g. the emphasis on class struggle) with anti-modernist stances (e.g. self-reliance, local subsistence economies). In order to explore this intriguing synthesis, we visited one of the fathers of KSSP, Mr. M.P. Parameswaran, in his house in Thrissur. M.P., as he is fondly called among the PSMs, is a former nuclear engineer who was involved in the first Indian nuclear programs in the 1950s at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay. In 1975, he resigned from his job after getting in touch with the anti-nuclear movement which, at that time, was emerging all over the world. After his resignation, he joined the newly born KSSP in his home state of Kerala. His role was fundamental in the setting up of the All India People’s Science Network, the common platform that connects all the Indian PSMs. He began by telling us his point of view about the irrationality of the notion of never-ending economic growth that affects modern capitalism. He argues that the logic of the capitalist productive system stands on profound irrational assumptions that threaten to destroy the very basis of human sociality. The first assumption is that well-being coincides with material growth and, as a result, the system is designed to increase industrial output without limits. The second assumption is that technology advancements are always desirable and neutral. He explained this point by saying:

“when you develop certain devices, certain processes, you develop technology. You do that to solve your problems. If you ask rich people to develop technology, they will select their problems [on] how to become richer […] now, most of the governments and the scientists in CSIR ask the questions of the rich people. How the rich can be richer. There should be places where poor people questions are asked […] so, innovation is just an English word that shows that something new is being created, but what is the objective?”.

His answer to this question is:

“[The] Purpose of innovation can be to reduce your material requirement. […] It can reduce your energy requirement. It can reduce your labour time requirement. It can improve your health in one particular way or another way. Giving you more nutrition or making you safer from diseases. Or cure your diseases. So there are all these things that improve your quality of life. […] Ultimately, what is the quality of life? Is it going on consuming? […] It cannot be working long time. You cannot go on. So, one has to cut consumption and redefine the concept of development and quality of life”.

To M.P., the reconceptualization of development as self-reliance was attempted by Gandhi, but it failed miserably because the zeitgeist of time was moving towards another direction:

“Gandhi appeared to be as going backward. Though there were a lot of progressive elements in Gandhi [ s thought although] even Gandhi could not differentiate [from his conservative arguments]. […] Whereas Nehru and other people wanted India to be like England, Germany and France. Go forward… modernize.”

However, in M.P.’s mind, the modernization project is framed by the interests of the dominant classes, which openly collide with the interests of the poor. In the race for innovation triggered by the globalization process, the rich are winning.

In India, after the liberalization of the economy, innovation became synonymous with the corporate world. As with Dinesh Abrol, M.P. has quite sharp opinions about the new trend represented by the concept of inclusive business models and inclusive innovation:

“[Inclusive business] is a subsidiary concept. Business needs to be exclusive. It needs to exclude the majority of people […] because that is the only way to make money, because you have to. […] The rich are rich because poor are excluded”.

The argument here, in line with the Marxist tradition, is that the interests of capital are diametrically opposed to the interests of the classes that have no other sources of income but selling their labor. However, unlike the pure Marxist thinker, the issues created by the unequal class structure are not resolved by reversing the ownership of the means of production but by changing the manner of production from centralized industrialism to small-scale, networked self-reliance. PSMs follow a Gramscian philosophy (Crehan 2011), advocating that the poor can be emancipated by enhancing the intrinsic rationality that characterizes their culture and daily practices. By removing the label of irrationality leveled at traditional beliefs, credos and ways of being, rural people can live a life based on community self-reliance, supported by grassroots technology and innovation, creating local networks of productive units.