COMMENTARY
in scientific knowledge and modernity
Development and Modernity
in the Global South
Why a Science and Technology Studies
Perspective Is Important
Jayanta Bandyopadhyay
A serious engagement with
science and technology and the
trajectories of its progress must
inform our understanding of
economic growth, development,
and what we consider
a modern life.
Jayanta Bandyopadhyay (jayanta@iimcal.
ac.in) is a retired member of the faculty at the
Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
34
needs to also further, and not hinder,
T
he terms development and mo-
dernity have been used widely
and diversely during the past sev-
eral decades, and continue to be evoked
extensively in the present time. Develop-
ment is projected as the path to moder-
nity, a unique and inevitably desirable
state for all human societies. Notwith-
standing their worldwide uses and aca-
demic research on them, these terms do
not yet carry any clear and universally
accepted meaning. Scholars, politicians,
media persons, corporate leaders, civil
society activists, etc, have all used these
terms in diverse contexts to suit their own
priorities and/or interests. In particular,
modernity has been analysed in the con-
text of art, history, the social sciences, etc.
In this article, the perception of moder-
nity has been examined at the level of the
common people, in particular, the emerg-
ing middle class in the global South.
The ideological span of the many sub-
jective and unexplained descriptions of
development and modernity extends
from the radical left to the neo-liberals.
These diverse descriptions have been the
subject of rich and extensive literature,
which have acquired a deep cultural
political status. A cursory look at any
newspaper or TV programme will be
enough to gauge the widespread use of
these terms in governance and other
political processes, especially in the
global South. In this article, the horizons
of the global South are extended from the
usual limits of ex-colonial, non-European
peoples (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012)
to include poor populations in industri-
ally developed countries. This article
aims at looking into the relationship
between development, modernity, and
the frontier knowledge of the sciences
and modern technology. Advancement
JULY 8, 2017
human dignity and security. Such intri-
cate and interdisciplinary studies on the
relationship of science and technology
with humanity are being described
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
as detailed by Jasanoff et al (1995).
Defining Development
Noted economists Mahbub ul Haq (1996)
and Amartya Sen worked on salvaging
development from narrow and solely
quantitative descriptions captured in a
single numerical parameter, the gross
domestic product (GDP). Kothari (1974)
suggested a more political definition of
development that propounds an alterna-
tive structure for the world order and
democracy. Haq and Sens initiative
to delineate a broader concept called
human development and an associated
measure named Human Development
Index (HDI) were based on expanding
the scope of quantification to include
important additional parameters related
to the impact of socio-economic changes
on the quality of human life in general.
Notwithstanding such efforts, there has
not been any fundamental change in the
exclusive domination of GDP or econom-
ic growth in the perception of what con-
stitutes development. The Human Deve-
lopment Report: The Way Ahead gives a
description of the various initiatives that
the United Nations Development Pro-
gramme (UNDP 2016) will continue to
work on in the future to enhance the
usefulness of the exercise of including
new parameters in estimating the HDI. A
review of the contribution of the United
Nations to the theory and practice of
development has been made by Jolly et al
(2004) who have stressed the need for
strengthening the standing of the HDI.
In the era of economic liberalisation
in the global South, the lead role of the
state in promoting human well-being has
been replaced by the market as a catalyst
of economic growth and a harbinger of
development and modernity. Discourses
on the meaning and desirability of devel-
opment have spanned from finding alter-
native paths to an economic growth-based
conception of development and tradi-
tional concepts by including qualitative
vol lIi no 27 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

parameters of human needs and aspira-
tions. While the belief development for
modernity has been questioned, such
views have remained limited to academics,
select financial institutions, and social
action groups. The concept of economic
growth as development that leads to
modernity has spread widely in the public
mind, particularly in the global South.
Supported by extensive media cam-
paigns, the luxurious lifestyles and con-
sumption patterns of the economically
better-off classes (a product of economic
growth) have successfully been project-
ed as modernity, as something that is
desirable for all human beings.
A general slowdown in the intellectual
processes driving holistic and more widely
acceptable forms of desirable human
futures has meant an increasing accept-
ance of the GDP-based quantitative notion
of development among the people in the
global South. With support ranging from
local political leaders to the global media,
such a notion has only reinforced this
public perception. This means higher
individual incomes, availability of newer
consumer items, greater material com-
forts, enhanced levels of resource and
energy consumption, etc. Issues of inclu-
sion, human dignity and ecological sta-
bility are not part of such a perception.
The assessment of development has
been made mainly in terms of its impact,
from the social, economic, political, and
cultural viewpoints. This may be called
the study of forward linkages of devel-
opment to human societies. Extensive
literature exists on this subject in diverse
social science subjects like economics,
political science, sociology, anthropology,
psychology, philosophy, etc (Desai and
Said 2001; Kothari 1974; Donavan 2014;
Berger and Beeson 1998). The grip of
GDP on the perception of development
has been strong enough to ward off the
questions that emerged after the global
economic meltdown of 2008, or the
physical limits to growth as pointed
out by the Donella Meadows Institute
(Meadows et al 2016).
Many eminent thinkers and leaders of
the global South, such as M K Gandhi and
Mao Tse-tung, had been critical of narrow
Western techno-economic perceptions of
modernity. Rabindranath Tagore wrote
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JULY 8, 2017
extensively on the need for non-Western
perceptions of modernity. These thoughts
made great but short-lived impressions
in their respective countries. With the
advancement of economic liberalisation,
Western modernity has become the aspi-
ration of a large number of common
people. The articulation and practice of a
diverse modernity is yet to emerge. Most
discourses on modernity were not con-
nected with the emerging roles at the
frontiers of science and modern technol-
ogy in providing newer products in the
market, and the power of the market in
shaping public aspirations to own these.
The lack of comprehensive environmen-
tal assessments and the marginalisation
of the negative social impacts of devel-
opment activities have spawned strong
and popular movements against devel-
opment projects. These include agita-
tions against river valley projects, land
acquisition for industries, diversion of
water flows, etc. These movements have
invariably been portrayed as against de-
velopment, and hence, accepted to be
against public interest and modernity.
Nevertheless, such movements mostly
expose serious gaps in the formulation
of projects. Over decades, such move-
ments have now consolidated as a global
de-growth movement (Kallis 2015).
Why an STS Perspective?
The next section aims to focus on the
linkages between frontiers in the sciences
and marketed products of modern tech-
nologies. These are considered as the
backward linkages of development and
as having strong influences on what gets
projected as modernity. Limited research
on this subject constitutes an important
gap in the work of social activists, aca-
demics, public policy researchers, grass
roots political leaders, etc. As a result,
the public perception that new products
in the market alone can deliver develop-
ment, which alone can lead to moderni-
ty, has got stronger with time, some-
thing that is often termed by critics as
growth fundamentalism.
In the present context, there is a sig-
nificant disconnect between frontier-
level scientific knowledge and common
people. Frontiers in science are largely
protected by property rights and are not
vol lIi no 27
COMMENTARY
available in the public domain. However,
as and when scientific knowledge gets
used in the production of modern tech-
nologies and new products for the
market, they become available in all
parts of the globalised world. Science
has grown in an unprecedented manner
in the last several decades and exerts
great influence in the shaping of human
futures, socially and individually. This
linkage will surely continue and grow
in the coming centuries.
Studies on the relations of human
societies with advances in the frontiers
of scientific knowledge have emerged in
the industrially advanced countries, ini-
tially along the lines of political analysis
(Solomon 1973). In the course of time,
an interdisciplinary field of study named
Science, Technology and Modernity
emerged (Jasanoff and Kim 2015). A
theoretical framework on this complex
and powerful relationship has been
shaped by Brey (2003) while a more
detailed historical analysis is given by
Forman (2007). The relationship between
science, technology and modernity in
the global South has been quite strong in
the era of economic liberalisation and glo-
balisation. However, this has not been an
object of much systematic research.
Nederveen (2009) has stressed the multi-
plicity of modernity which is not a unique
path guided by the Western concept of
the term. In the global South, public
perceptions of modernity had initially
evolved with a postcolonial inclination
towards economic growth for human
well-being. In that period, there were
attempts to define modernity in diverse
forms, especially in art, literature, etc.
With time and the advance of globalisa-
tion, such efforts gave way to the singular
perception that slowly brought an end to
modernity-based thought processes. In
recent years in the global South, with
post-liberalisation economic growth,
modernity got linked with what can be
called the modernity of consumption.
This form of modernity is spreading
rapidly in the global South.
The almost spontaneous growth of a
consumption pattern promoted by the
rapidly expanding network of malls in
cities of the global South is an important
case. There was no great public opinion
35
COMMENTARY
asking for the establishment of malls.
They came up in large numbers as a re-
sult of someone investing, and the upper
middle class and the rich have already
accepted the related consumption cul-
ture as modernity.
Open Society, Guarded Science
Common people in the global South may
have little to do with or access to the
goings-on at the frontiers of science.
Even if such information is made avail-
able, it will not be understood or useful
to them in todays context. As knowledge
has grown in the industrialised parts of
the world, the frontier knowledge of
science has increasingly been subjected
to a protected intellectual property regime.
In a globalised world, not all knowledge
generated is used commercially. The
market brings commercial products of
technologies based on that part of the
knowledge which is released for open
use. The process of economic growth
gets crucial support from the consump-
tion-based concept of modernity which
plays a much wider role in shaping hu-
man societies today. Scholars in the
global South have not sufficiently ad-
dressed issues relating to science, tech-
nology and consumption. The result has
been that a singular perceptual trinity
of science, technology and market, has
got distinguished as modernity. It is
hoped that an STS analysis may throw
light on the backward linkages of devel-
opment and modernity, thus bringing
much needed dynamism in the dis-
course on human futures.
Missing Link of STS
In the public imagination of the global
South, modernity evokes images of being
served by the frontiers of sciences, modern
technologies, and a lifestyle of comfort
and material abundance. Such a process
is not linear and the frontier knowledge
in sciences, left to itself, will have a
stronger linkage with human societies
and its governance. It is here that the
missing link of STS perspective would
prove increasingly useful.
The connection of the creation of
frontier knowledge and marketing of
products based even partly on that
knowledge is not simple and direct. An
36
account of the selective use of frontier
knowledge is difficult to obtain. Frontier
knowledge of science is now produced
with high levels of confidentiality, due to
strategic or business interests. At what
stage and time would the frontier knowl-
edge be released for use in market pro-
duction depends on many factors, not
necessarily connected with the market
prospects of the products. The public
access to internet is a good example. The
internet was originally developed, in
the 1960s, as a defence communication
facility for the United States in the era of
Cold War. Following the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the technology was not
needed for strategic purposes and was
released for public access in the 1990s. It
was a strategic decision. It was not market
forces that spurred internet accessibility
to people all over the world and revolu-
tionised civilian communication. The
internet in todays world is probably the
first indicator of modernity for global
human societies.
The prospect of frontier knowledge
ushering fundamental transformation of
human societies is high. Kaku (2011), a
well-known theoretical physicist, has
extended a broad analysis projecting the
potential role of frontier knowledge in
physics in shaping human societies in
the coming centuries. However, frontier
knowledge of science today will not, in
all probability, be objective, as has been
questioned by Ziman (1996), a renowned
condensed matter physicist and humanist.
Popular belief that developments in new
technologies will always promote hu-
man well-being and offer an affluent
economic future for all humans is ques-
tionable. For example, artificial intelli-
gence and robotics, left to the market,
would promote marginalisation of hu-
mans on a large scale. Genetic engineer-
ing and biotechnology, in addition to
making parts of the human body avail-
able off the shelves in the market, is
expected to soon duplicate humans
themselves by cloning.
With humans reaching beyond earth,
the emergence of a planetary civilisation
can be a reality. Kaku (2015) throws light
on the advancements in knowledge on
the functioning of the human brain.
What is important in this regard is
JULY 8, 2017
the distinct possibility of technologies
moderating or controlling the processes
of human thinking with subtle tech-
nological interventions. Application of
such technologies is going to radically
alter the self-image of human beings and
the traditional meaning of human
rights. The power of frontier science and
technology could impact the ideas of
freedom and democratic governance of
human societies, as we understand them
today. The implications of the recent
advances in science and technology are
far wider and deeper than what these
were in the period of the industrial
revolution, when science and democracy
evolved collaboratively. For human
societies today, developments at the
frontiers of science and technology have
become a crucial policy issue. The ques-
tion on how much of the frontier knowl-
edge of sciences and modern technolo-
gies need to be in the public domain has
become a critical issue in governance
(for instance, the debates on genetically
modified foods).
Conclusions
In the present era, human societies are
quickly nearing that critical civilisational
crossroad where a vigorous discussion is
needed on the forms of desirable human
futures in the era of rapid and potent
advancements in frontier science know-
ledge and modern technologies. If human
societies do not consciously address that
task, it will be taken up in proxy by the
techno-scientific drivers of the global
market (recall the spread of the new
consumption-based modernity). In such
a case, a pre-fabricated human future,
designed by quantifiable indicators like
the GDP, will replace conscious human
choices. The crucial qualitative aspects,
on which human dignity and civilisa-
tions or ecological stability of the natu-
ral environment are based, run the risk
of being marginalised in that process.
This is why the social, historical, political,
cultural and other dimensions of frontier
sciences and modern technologies, with
their subtle links to what gets projected
as development and modernity, gains
serious importance. The STS perspective
can provide much needed holistic
knowledge on this subject.
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 COMMENTARY

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