(Nation) building civic epistemologies around nuclear energy in India


Author
Monamie Bhadra Haines

Instead, this article argues that nuclear India is experiencing epistemological crossfire fromvarious groups as they attempt to coproduce their particular epistemic and political order. In particular, how the overt focus of India’s nuclear authorities on Public Understanding of Science (PUS) and scientific literacy by the nuclear establishment is received by different groups point toward the idea that PUS is really a proxy for PUDDLERS. This acronym refers to the public’s understanding for the means and ends of Development, desired participation in Democracy, the correct interpretation of Lived Experiences, and increasingly, to the subscription to the prescribed Religion of Hindu fundamentalist ideas, in addition to the state’s institutional ideas of Science. With the increasing political debilitation and sometimes death of activists who are deemed anti-state or anti-development, these dynamics will not abate in the near future.

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