A POSTCAPITALIST PARADIGM: THE COMMON GOOD OF ...

5 The People’s Science Movement, India
PEOPLE’S SCIENCE FOR THE
COMMON GOOD OF HUMANITY
VINOD RAINA
An acceleration of the economic crisis, violence due to war and militarism
and the escalating ecological crisis broadly define the challenges
at the end of the first decade of the twenty first century. The impact of
these crises is so severe now that the search for alternative paradigms
can no longer be a laid back academic pursuit; the survival of a large section
of humanity and the earth could crucially be dependent on our ability
to craft alternative visions and practices that keep both the humanity
and the Earth happy. For long, the happiness of humanity has been dependent
on the seemingly inexhaustible ‘resources’ the Earth has provided.
These resources, once common, have gradually passed into
private and monopoly interests causing immeasurable hardships to
those, mostly farmers, adivasis (indigenous people) and poor, for whom
these were available as common property resources – like water, forests
and land (jal, jangal and zameen as they are called in India). The large
scale destruction and monopolization of ecological resources has perhaps
benefited a miniscule population, but it has left a majority destitute.
The 1% and the 99% are therefore not only economic categories, they
are ecological too. And war is an agency being used more often and aggressively
to expand control on the ecological resources – oil, gas, seas,
strategic lands and so on, in order that economic affluence of the 1%
humanity may further increase to what can only be called obscene levels.
It ought to be clear therefore that the three crises are linked, even
though very often they may appear separated.
The ability of the humans to exploit the resources of the earth for accelerated
economic prosperity and to wage more ferocious wars has a
common element, namely the knowledge gained regarding the functioning
of nature, what we call science. Science and technology are at
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