Nanoscale: Society's Deep Impact on Science, Technology and Innovation in India by Pankaj Sekhsaria, and: Instrumental Lives: An Intimate Biography of an Indian Laboratory by Pankaj Sekhsaria (review).

Abstract

Reviewed by: Nanoscale: Society's Deep Impact on Science, Technology and Innovation in India by Pankaj Sekhsaria, and: Instrumental Lives: An Intimate Biography of an Indian Laboratory by Pankaj Sekhsaria Hyungsub Choi (bio) Nanoscale: Society's Deep Impact on Science, Technology and Innovation in India By Pankaj Sekhsaria. Greater Noida: AuthorsUpFront, 2020. Pp. 182 Instrumental Lives: An Intimate Biography of an Indian Laboratory By Pankaj Sekhsaria. Oxon: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 126. As faculty member of a technical university in South Korea, I frequently receive unsolicited emails from newly minted Indian Ph.D.s in science and engineering. The standardized messages invariably come with CVs attached. Typically, the scientists possess degrees from respectable institutions in India, complete with peer-reviewed publications in indexed periodicals. Some successfully secure postdoctoral positions in South Korean universities, contributing to R&D projects funded by the national government or hightech industries. This is but a narrow slice of the global and transnational enterprise called contemporary science. The experience made me wonder about the vast scale and scope of India's scientific workforce. Thankfully, Pankaj Sekhsaria provides a valuable glimpse into the underbelly of Indian scientific research. The two books under review are products of Sekhsaria's doctoral research at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He has conducted fieldwork in five nanoscience laboratories in Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai, all in India. Sekhsaria's focus on nano may have been opportunistic, as at the time nanotechnology was the leading buzzword around the world. However, the survey opens a window for observing the state of scientific research in contemporary India. Nanoscale is a more popular rendition, succinctly outlining the research activities in the five labs; Instrumental Lives is a more scholarly version, focusing on one of them. In Instrumental Lives, Sekhsaria shines a spotlight on the scientific life of C. V. Dharmadhikari, a physicist at the University of Pune credited with the indigenous development of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Dharmadhikari completed his Ph.D. at Pune in 1979 and, like many good Indian scientists, continued his research career in the United States. By the mid-1980s, he was positioned squarely within the surface science community as the STM took off as a major scientific instrument (Mody, Instrumental Communities). When Dharmadhikari returned to Pune as faculty member, he set out to make his own STM there, successfully completing the first version by 1988. The city of Pune provided a fertile environment for Dharmadhikari to pursue his goals. Located 90 miles inland, in southeast Mumbai, Pune was [End Page 859] home to many educational and research institutions. It was also bustling with manufacturing and commercial activities in "thriving small and medium industry enterprises" and booming "junk markets" (pp. 43, 52). The lively urban environment shaped Dharmadhikari's scientific practice. Not only could he acquire diverse parts from bungee cords and stepping motors to tuning forks and bobbins (p. 40), he also had access to a wide range of experts in nearby institutions who shared his interest and would become "users" of his microscope. In short, Dharmadhikari utilized whatever resources were available to create his version of the STM, which he then used to produce scientific knowledge and skilled scientists of the nanoscale. In analyzing this case, Sekhsaria is primarily interested in identifying the nature of Dharmadhikari's work. Was it a "quintessentially Indian" (p. 10) mode of innovation, or a mere replica of original work by Western scientists? At this juncture, the recent debate on jugaad is useful. While difficult to translate into English, the term usually refers to "creative improvisation" (p. 30). An archetypal example of jugaad is the low-cost quadricycle made of wooden planks and a repurposed diesel engine. On one hand, these kuddukkas represent the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Indians under severe financial constraints. On the other hand, they are looked down on as something that falls short of "genuine innovation" (p. 32). By acknowledging Dharmadhikari's microscope as "technological jugaad" (ch. 5), Sekhsaria emphasizes the role of science and technology as solutions to mundane problems, eschewing the idolization of innovation as pursuit of high-tech agendas disengaged from everyday life. Scientists and technologists in the "underdeveloped" world (one could say postcolonial or non-Western, depending...