One serious, but often overlooked, flaw of science education in India is the state of syllabi — nobody seems to have talked about it. Simply put, we have to teach our students nationally important elements of science, as well as the history of Indian science.
Consider existing syllabi of microbiology or infectious/communicable diseases across Indian universities; diseases that are endemic to the Indian subcontinent are not included, while that of US and Europe are included — which is of little practical significance to Indian students.
What is the point of teaching diseases like Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Chagas disease or “human African sleeping sickness”, which are not reported from India? While malaria, rabies and dengue can be occasionally spotted in syllabi of some universities, most of the common endemic diseases prevalent in the Indian subcontinent, including Ascariasis, Trichuriasis, Strongyloidiasis, Toxocariasis, Lymphatic filariasis, Trachoma, Visceral leishmaniasis, Japanese encephalitis, Chikungunya, Leptospirosis, and Amebiasis are altogether missing in syllabi of most of the universities, including that of the medical colleges.
This would mean students passing out of those courses are utterly ignorant of the local problems pertinent to them — an issue of great significance in the country’s didactic policy. These exact diseases are globally known as neglected tropical diseases — neglected by the West for the obvious reason that these diseases are not found there. But is it not ironical that these are even neglected in their home!
A number of such diseases still have neither effective treatments nor vaccines, suggesting a lack of research progress in those lines. Medical councils and grant agencies such as Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) should urgently prioritize funding research projects on these diseases.
In India, evolution is typically taught beginning with the creation myth, history of evolutionary thoughts in the West, to Darwin’s theory of evolution and evidences supporting it. However, this strategy is tailor- made for Western students; Indians never had a problem accepting Darwin’s theory of evolution, as similar concepts exist in India since time immemorial.
Ancient Indians considered earth is way much older than 6,000 years — as thought of in the West till the 18 Century. Which Indian won’t get surprised to know that Professor John Lightfoot, 17 Century Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, calculated the age of earth to be 6,019 years — a claim that stood unchallenged for nearly a century? According to ancient Indian texts age of earth is 1.97 billion years (precisely 197,29,49,116 years, in year 2015), which is much closer to the current consensus of 4.6 billion years.
Indians regarded that the cosmos was eternal, recurring and cyclic, which is strikingly close to the current scientific understanding that the earth underwent cycles of warming and ice ages. In contrast, the West considered the earth as constant in a non-repeating straight-line.
Palaeontology part of the syllabi as well is very much skewed to the West, with in-depth coverage of lagerstätten of Canada, the U.S., China etc., but that of the Indian subcontinent (for e.g., Kota, Lameta, Maleri, Mandla Formations), being entirely omitted. Works of Birbal Sahni and Pramatha Nath Bose — famous Indian paleontologists, should be included in the syllabi, so as the fossil parks of India and geological history of the Indian subcontinent.
Environmental Sciences is yet another discipline that is expected to benefit greatly by the addition of topics of national significance. Indian coastal ecosystem is altogether missing across the present syllabi, including island biogeography of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the Lakshwadeep Archipelago.
For a majority of students, the biome “Savanna” is either in the United States or in Mediterranean and they do not know a Savanna (TeraiDuar) exists in India, an issue that clearly portrays problems with ecology syllabi across the country. India, by virtue of its deep-rooted cultural practices, had been conserving bio-resources since time immemorial in the form of sacred-groves, as a couple of studies have revealed, and an in-depth understanding of sacred-groves in biodiversity conservation should be included in the environmental sciences syllabi.
One reason for the problem of syllabi not covering the local issues or works of Indian scientists is that a majority of science textbooks published from India are in fact based on textbooks published from elsewhere, notably England and the U.S., and the syllabi adapted by universities here are in turn based on those textbooks. It is expected that the Indian Science will greatly benefit from a nation-wide effort to “Indianise” our science syllabi and textbooks, along with its timely revision.
( The author is an Assistant Professor, Centre for Biosciences, Central University of Punjab, Email: felix.bast@gmail.com)
