Core Challenges and Debates Within the People Science Movement

The People’s Science Movement (PSM) has always been more than a campaign to teach science to the public. At its heart, it is a movement grappling with some of the most contested questions in modern society: Who does science serve? Who gets to define what counts as valid knowledge? And can a country like India build a truly people-centered science without simply copying Western models? These are not abstract debates – they directly shape how science policy is made, whose voices are included, and whether science becomes a tool for liberation or for reinforcing inequality.

Is science neutral? The foundational debate 🔗

One of the most fundamental issues within the PSM is the question of scientific neutrality. Mainstream science is often portrayed as objective, value-free, and universal. The PSM firmly challenges this view. Science for the People, one of the key intellectual ancestors of the global people’s science tradition, built its entire mission on the argument that science is not politically neutral – it is shaped by the economic and political interests of those who fund and control it. The movement’s publications challenged mainstream understandings of science as neutral, showing it to be inherently political.

In India, PSM organizations like the All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) take a similar position. Research published in the Journal of Science Communication describes how AIPSN disputes the dominant development trajectory and science and technology-related policies for reinforcing existing inequities, while still seeing science as a powerful ally for social emancipation. The movement’s argument is not that science is bad, but that the way it is practiced, funded, and applied is deeply political – and needs to be reclaimed for ordinary people.

The science-society divide: a structural problem 🔗

A core challenge the PSM has consistently identified is the structural gap between scientific institutions and the lives of ordinary people. The movement’s basic philosophy holds that science and technology inputs are essential to achieve an equitable and sustainable society, but that such inputs by themselves are not sufficient. What is missing is public participation in shaping how science is done and applied.

This gap has concrete consequences. Development projects are frequently carried out without analyzing their environmental and social impact. Forest policies are designed by technocrats without input from the tribal communities who depend on those forests. Medical technology reaches cities long before it reaches villages. The PSM argues that unless ordinary people – farmers, women, workers, students – are actively involved in the practice and governance of science, it will continue to serve elite interests rather than societal needs.

According to the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, the PSM in India has worked to democratize not just the dissemination of knowledge, but also its generation and integration in Indian society, centering the sociocultural consciousness of the Indian people. This is a much more ambitious project than science communication – it is about restructuring the relationship between knowledge and power.

Integrating natural and social sciences 🔗

Another fundamental debate within the PSM concerns the artificial separation between natural sciences and social sciences. In mainstream academic culture, these two domains are treated as entirely distinct. Natural scientists study the physical world; social scientists study society. The PSM argues that this separation is both intellectually false and politically harmful.

Scholars studying PSMs in India have noted that there is a continuous reproduction of an unequal relationship between natural sciences on one hand and social sciences and humanities on the other – with modern science often considered “superior” and meant for the brighter students. The PSM directly contests this hierarchy. As sociologist K.P. Kannan argued, imbibing the method of science to understand not only physical reality but social reality as well, and attempting to raise relevant questions to find solutions to social problems, is what gives science its activist role.

The PSM’s conception of science takes into account not only natural phenomena, but also analyzes the social relations that inform them. In practice, this means that when the movement addresses an issue like deforestation, it does not simply talk about the ecology – it also examines the economic interests, state policies, and power structures that drive it. Science and social analysis are treated as inseparable tools for understanding and changing reality.

The Western science problem: critique and alternatives 🔗

Perhaps the most heated debate within the PSM – and in broader conversations about science and development – concerns the wholesale adoption of Western models of science. Critics within the movement argue that post-independence India largely inherited a model of science that was shaped by European industrialization, colonial administration, and capitalist interests. Simply transplanting this model into an Indian context, without questioning its assumptions, risks reproducing the same inequalities in a new form.

Researchers studying colonial legacies in science have pointed out that Western sciences have historically been used to justify the domination of non-Western societies, displacing non-Western peoples from their territories and dismissing the value of non-Western knowledge systems – a process sometimes called “epistemicide.” The PSM’s critique of Western-centric science is rooted in this history. It does not reject modern science as such, but it insists that science must be adapted to local contexts, needs, and values rather than applied as a universal template.

According to scholar Roli Varma, the so-called “science wars” that dominated Western academic debate in the 1990s – a conflict between those defending scientific objectivity and those questioning it from a social constructivist standpoint – do not translate neatly to the Indian context. In India, the link between science and society has always been viewed as organic rather than separate. PSM activists stress the unity of natural sciences and society, showing the existence of social issues within natural science questions and vice versa. This is a fundamentally different intellectual tradition from the Western one.

The case for indigenous knowledge 🔗

Closely linked to the critique of Western science is the PSM’s engagement with indigenous knowledge systems. This is one of the most complex debates within the movement. On one hand, the PSM has historically championed rational, scientific thinking as an antidote to superstition and dogma. On the other hand, it has increasingly recognized that the knowledge held by local communities – about ecology, agriculture, medicine, and land management – has genuine value that mainstream science has often dismissed or exploited.

Indigenous scholars and scientists have argued that Western science could benefit from understanding that it is not the only valid system of knowledge production. The Indigenous Science Statement, signed by over 2,000 people globally, challenged the notion that there is only one way to generate knowledge. Indigenous science, rooted in long-term observation and relationship with the natural world, offers frameworks that reductionist Western methods cannot replicate.

Research on integrating indigenous and scientific knowledge shows concrete examples of why this matters: indigenous communities like the Quechua people in the Peruvian Andes have used traditional knowledge to maintain ancient terracing systems that prevent soil erosion and ensure water conservation – solutions that Western agronomy took centuries to recognize. The PSM’s position is that these knowledge systems should be engaged with seriously, not romanticized or subordinated to academic validation.

However, the debate is not simple. Scholars examining knowledge integration caution that building a workable framework requires genuinely accommodating different interpretations of reality and knowledge criteria, recognizing the value of pluralism and mutual learning. Simply calling for integration without addressing the power imbalances between knowledge systems risks tokenizing indigenous knowledge rather than genuinely valuing it.

Science for whom? The people-centered imperative 🔗

All of these debates converge on a single central question: who is science for? The PSM’s answer is unequivocal – science must serve people, especially those who have historically been excluded from its benefits. Organizations within the PSM sought to shift some of the powers of scientific knowledge and technology away from Western institutions and elite Indians toward the hands of the masses – scientists, teachers, engineers, and students working together to make science work for the common person.

This people-centered vision has practical implications. It means that choosing which technology to adopt in a given community is not a purely technical question – it is a social and political one. PSMs point out that creating products like weapons or non-therapeutic narcotics may increase GDP, but they do not enhance quality of life. Their framework calls for a future egalitarian society in which the full potential of science and technology can be deployed for a good life for all, without destroying the planet.

The AIPSN’s membership structure reflects this vision directly. Its membership includes village teachers, working mothers, women, youth, students, farmers, industrial workers, and service sector professionals alongside scientists and academic experts – a deliberate effort to bring science into genuine dialogue with the communities it is meant to serve. Within this framework, science signifies all branches of knowledge, cutting across the traditional divide between natural and social sciences.

The tension between scientific temper and local culture 🔗

One final tension deserves attention: the PSM’s commitment to scientific rationalism sometimes sits uneasily with its respect for local culture and indigenous knowledge. The movement has historically been critical of superstition and religious dogma, arguing that a rational, scientific temper is essential for building an equitable society. But critics ask: does this commitment to rationalism risk becoming a new form of cultural imperialism – dismissing traditional ways of understanding the world as mere superstition?

As Roli Varma observes in the Economic and Political Weekly, even people who publicly commit to scientific temper do not always lead their lives according to strict scientific rationality. The rise of religiosity in India does not necessarily mean being anti-modern science; the two can coexist. The PSM’s challenge is to promote critical scientific thinking without dismissing the cultural contexts in which people actually live – to be pro-science without being culturally dismissive.

This is not a contradiction unique to India. Science for the People Magazine has articulated a similar challenge globally: the recognition that science has been wielded as a tool of colonization and cultural marginalization means that a truly people-centered science must actively work to decolonize its own assumptions, including its assumptions about what counts as rational.

Why these debates matter 🔗

The fundamental issues within the PSM – about neutrality, integration, indigenous knowledge, and people-centered development – are not academic disagreements. They have direct consequences for how science policy is made, how development projects are designed, and whose knowledge is respected. A movement that simply takes Western science to the people without questioning it risks delivering the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. A movement that romanticizes traditional knowledge without engaging critically risks leaving communities without the analytical tools they need.

The PSM’s ongoing effort is to hold these tensions together: to champion science as a tool for liberation while insisting that science itself must be transformed – made more democratic, more locally grounded, more socially aware, and more genuinely responsive to human need.

What do you think? Should science policy in developing countries prioritize adapting Western scientific frameworks to local contexts, or should it build entirely new knowledge systems grounded in indigenous traditions? And is it possible for a movement to promote scientific rationalism while genuinely respecting and integrating non-Western ways of knowing – or does that tension remain unresolvable?

References

1. https://www.umasspress.com/9781625343185/science-for-the-people/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Peoples_Science_Network
3. https://jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/JCOM_1906_2020_C08/
4. https://www.sociologydiscussion.com/science/genesis-of-people-science-movement-explained/851
5. https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-73-peoples-science-movement-karnataka-india/
6. https://www.academia.edu/66727718/Communicating_Science_in_India_through_People_s_Science_Movements_PSMs_
7. https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2023-0071
8. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262121934_People's_Science_Movements_and_Science_Wars
9. https://hluce.org/we-need-to-blend-indigenous-knowledge-and-western-science-for-deeper-insights/
10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901125001352
11. https://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/02WhyIntegrating.pdf
12. https://www.grin.com/document/504543
13. https://www.epw.in/journal/2001/52/perspectives/peoples-science-movements-and-science-wars.html
14. https://magazine.scienceforthepeople.org/vol23-1/indigenous-knowledge-western-science-and-the-us-colonial-project/