Decolonizing Science: Episode 3
Episode 3 of our ‘Decolonizing Science’ series features a roundtable of interdisciplinary panelists including Anumita Roy Chowdhury, Shibani Ghosh, Sarath Guttikunda, Rohit Negi, and David Jones, who share their experiences working to address issues of air pollution in the Indian context. The roundtable talk is hosted by MIT PhD researcher Priyanka deSouza and CoLab Radio producer Emmett McKinney, with additional support from Allison Lee. The session was recorded on August 24, 2020, and lightly edited for clarity. Both the video and the audio podcast are included, with key insights summarized below.
Cover Photo by Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images via Vox.
Key Takeaways
1. We are overly reliant on quick fixes and universal solutions.
“We have this impression about “silver bullets” - that they’ll come and solve all our problems. We really need to move away from that.” - Sarath Guttikunda
“It’s clear from all the work that historians have looked at, and all the work that you [all] are doing now, is to make progress, you need to align very complex interests.” - David Jones
2. Science is only part of the solution.
“Science’s role is also to tell us the limitations of science. So if science is throwing up solutions, it also has to tell us when the solutions will not work.” - Shibani Ghosh
“The problem is never the lack of science. The problem, as was suggested, is really an issue of political will.” - David Jones
3. Science can be wielded for different outcomes, depending on the user.
“We have official and non-governmental science, academic sciences, [and] there is corporate science …which often does an effective work of confusion. Its job is to confuse. Its job is to never arrive, or let arrive, at a consensus on anything.” - Rohit Negi
“If you’re going to give environmental clearance to yet another power plant, or yet another ash pond, or yet another coal mining project in a critically polluted area, that’s environmental injustice at a whole new level.” - Shibani Ghosh
“Whether the obstacles are the counter-discourse of science getting produced by industry to muddy the waters, or …the problem of people saying, “we don’t know enough, we need to do more science before acting.” That’s often a deliberate strategy by industry to stall and it’s very important that people are aware of these obstacles and have constant strategies against them.” - David Jones
4. We need to re-examine how policies and science interact.
“Economic incentives, political incentives, are not aligned with improved environmental outcomes. And somehow in this policy prioritization exercise, environmental outcomes are losing.” - Shibani Ghosh
“There is a regressive, problematic process happening globally at the moment, which is a surgence of narrow nationalism, including among institutions, knowledge production, [and] communication.” - Rohit Negi
“Why is it that in Delhi, if 34% of people walk but 15% drive cars, it’s the 15% who drive policies?” - Anumita Roy Chowdhury
5. Too much focus is on “innovation” and not enough on ingrained knowledge and lived experiences.
“It’s not that people are unaware. They know, but often are not confident about the legitimacy of the way they know.” - Rohit Negi
“We’re not really going after the known examples. We are trying to find new science or new ideas to re-innovate the whole concept of air quality management. …There are a lot of ways to innovate things. But there is also a lot of work that’s been done, which is not being looked at to take it forward.” - Sarath Guttikunda
“We never understood the value of knowledge that exists with those who experience the problem, those who have to live the solution. And we have never tapped that knowledge and science to shape our policies.” - Anumita Roy Chowdhury
6. There needs to be more attention to local context, while still maintaining international partnerships.
“We need a lot more emphasis on bringing Indian science out to Indian audiences in a way that Indian policy makers can consume.” - Sarath Guttikunda
“In terms of whose voice contributes to the research, the vast share of what has been written about the history of India, was written by people who never traveled further than the British Library in London.” - David Jones
“The right justice is to address all the sources, at the sources.” - Sarath Guttikunda
7. Processes and solutions must take a more inclusive humanistic approach.
“It is absolutely essential that we understand the politics of science. We have to understand the negotiating power of all community groups, including the vulnerable groups, and enable them.” - Anumita Roy Chowdhury
“Air pollution has been seen, among other things, as a technical and managerial concern for at least the last century.” - Rohit Negi
“The moment you say, now we need everyone, the different communities, to known the knowledge, it also means that we are no longer confining ourselves to one single story or narrative.” - Anumita Roy Chowdhury
About the Speakers
Anumita Roy Chowdhury is Executive Director of Research and Advocacy, and Head of the Air Pollution and Clean Transportation Programme, for the Centre for Science and the Environment.
Shibani Ghosh is a Public Interest Lawyer and Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). She specializes in environmental and access-to-information laws. At CPR, she researches issues relating to domestic environmental law and regulation.
Sarath Guttikunda is Founder/Director of Urban Emissions, which acts as a repository of information, research, and analysis related to air pollution.
Rohit Negi is Assistant Professor in the School of Global Affairs at Ambedkar University in India. He is currently leading an extension of The Asthma Files’ Six Cities Project in Delhi.
David Jones is the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of Culture and Medicine at Harvard University. A psychiatrist and historian of medicine, he teaches history, medical ethics and social medicine, and is currently working on a history of air pollution in India.
About the Hosts / Organizers
Priyanka deSouza is a PhD researcher at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning in the Senseable City Lab. Priyanka studies air pollution from both a scientific and urban planning perspective, with a focus on East Africa.
Emmett McKinney is a Producer for CoLab Radio, where he works to amplify community narratives. Emmett holds a master in city planning degree from MIT (2020). His area of focus includes transportation and water infrastructure, and specifically how equity and justice are integrated into data-driven planning. Outside of CoLab, Emmett can be found running, drinking coffee, and dancing to reggaeton.
Allison Lee is a producer of CoLab Radio and a masters student in the MIT Dept of Urban Studies and Planning. She is interested in balancing conservation and development, and places community and culture at the heart of her work.
About the Series
The ‘Decolonizing Science’ podcast series was initiated in Fall 2019 by two passionate researchers Priyanka deSouza and Jia-Hui Lee who reached out to CoLab Radio about bringing this conversation to the forefront. The first episode features Priyanka and Jia-Hui, who spoke about the concept of what it means to “decolonize science” and how this movement has been gaining traction in various parts of the world. A second episode dove deeper in the topic and featured Dr. Pallavi Pant, air quality scientist and founder of the web platform India Air Quality Hub.
This roundtable will be followed be further panel discussions, placing the movement in a global context. Stay tuned - and if this topic strikes a chord with your work or interests, please reach out to us at colabcom@mit.edu.